One frustrating aspect of your credit score is that lenders use it to determine if you’re a reliable borrower, but your report doesn’t show all your other good financial habits outside of credit cards or loans. What about your sparkling payment history for your utilities, your always-early rent payments, or your consistent cash flow?
Several programs can help you increase your credit score by adding elements to your credit history.
Credit scoring system FICO allows you to opt into UltraFICO, which pulls in information about the balances for your checking, savings, and money market accounts to show that you have a consistent banking history. It doesn’t replace your score if you already have enough credit history for a FICO score—it simply creates a new score with the additional information included. FICO says that seven in ten people who sign up find out they have an UltraFICO score that’s higher than their regular score; you can choose to share your UltraFICO score with lenders when it’s time to make your next big financial decision.
Credit bureau Experian allows you to connect your bank accounts, which it uses to pull your positive payment history for utility and phone bills. Then you can choose which accounts you include for your boost. Experian says that the average user sees their FICO 8 score increase by 13 points. Experian does warn that if your lender doesn’t use the FICO 8 score (there are 10 FICO scoring versions), your boosted score may not reflect when that lender pulls your credit score.