Raising FICO Scores by Piggybacking – Is it Still Effective?

Have you wondered how credit repair companies work and how is it that they are able to repair credit quickly? These companies use a technique called Piggybacking, an easy way of boosting scores. The process involves adding the consumer with bad credit as an authorized user on good credit accounts.

The good account has all the necessary elements that are needed for a good credit i.e. long history, low balance and high limit. So when the consumer with bad credit is added as an authorized user, he gets all the benefits of the good credit. It is the easiest way to improve your score.

However, FICO got wise to these tactics of credit repair companies and introduced FICO 8, a new scoring system to ensure that the system could not be manipulated. This scoring system was created with the aim to end piggybacking. But, when it was later realised that the new scoring system was unfair to spouses who depended on their spouses’ credit for keeping their own account intact, the decision was changed,

This system affected stay at home women who depended on their husband’s credit account to boost their scores.

Lenders too found a genuine problem of keeping up with Regulation B. This regulation states that credit history of the primary user’s account should be considered in case of accounts shared by spouses.

The reversal of FICO’s decision was welcomed but the scoring company found other ways to put an end to all deceptive practices. Though the company has not revealed its method of analyzing and approving genuine authorized users, it is not too difficult to guess how the weeding out is done.

Your credit report contains a number of personal details about you like you married name, your present and past addresses and relationship to the authorized user among other things. All this information is taken into account at the time

Parents, children, spouses are all considered by FICO to be authorized users. The authorized user should have good reasons to be able to access the account of the primary user.

of determining the authenticity of an authorized user. It is not difficult to know if you are a spouse, parent or child by examining the last names, addresses et al. If a Credit card has numerous authorized users, it will not be too difficult to determine the relationship and find out if they are legitimate or not.

If the lender has not yet begun to use FICO 8, you can use piggybacking to boost your scores.

There are many credit repair companies misleading consumers with the promise of a quick fix to their credit. All lenders and banks are not yet using FICO 8. However, as banks do not publicly disclose what scoring model they use, it cannot be known for sure.

If you are seeking to repair your credit account, then the best way to do it is by following good credit habits patiently. There are no quick fixes and sooner or later, FICO will flag your account if it finds that the system has been manipulated. That might get you into more trouble. You will have spent more money with no results to show.