Is 773 a good credit score? | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Yes, 773 is a good score. and scores in the 700's are very common.

Last year when I opened an account at Comtech Fire Credit Union I was told my score was 840 and that those above 800 were a minority. I had never before asked about my score. Never cared about it.

It depends on whether or not the lender uses the same scoring model.

The free credit score report from RBC has the TransUnion CreditVision Risk Score. That score will not mean much if the lender uses the Equifax Risk Score, the FICO Risk Score, or their own proprietary score calculated from the credit history.

I suppose having a pattern of regularly taking on debt and subsequently meeting all obligations might be considered a safer bet than someone who doesn't have much of a history with debt.

I think most of us on here would be pretty careful before we loaned our money to a stranger. And I'm sure we'd also expect an fi where we keep our deposits to do their due diligence before they loan it out.

Loonie said
I think it's all a bit of a racket, really. You have to take on loans, whether you need them or not, and pay unnecessary interest, when you may have gobs of money of your own, just to satisfy these people that you're a good risk for a credit card?  

I'm with you. For over 40 years, I have had credit cards, mortgages, line of credits, investment loans, etc. It is only in the last couple of years that I heard the term 'credit score'. It is not like there is one universal score, right?

Transunion credit bureau routes calls to India. Only for your information, so you don’t freak out as I did. It is legit, not a “stolen phone number”. The reps (two) were reading of a scrip, that did not correlate to my question, which prompted me to ask about their location. India. Did not feel comfortable going through the identification process. Could you spell “Toronto”? With one of the reps I was not able to communicate due to language barrier on her side.

SavingIsGood said
…Current credit score: 845; in June 2017 was 829. Did I do anything (loan, late payments, new CC, etc.) between 2017 and today? No.
So credit score is the same as Tangerine's 'offers'. Random number or as I like to say plain BS.  

There was a change. Probably a change in loan or credit card balances that changes the percent utilization of total available credit. However, such small changes or differences in credit score are not meaningful.

In a previous post, I mentioned Globe & Mail article What qualifies as a good credit score? A woman was surprised to find her boyfriend had a higher credit score of 846 than her score of 783. She wondered what she did wrong.

An Equifax Canada vice-president explained that the difference in scores is not meaningful to lenders and that lenders consider any score above 700 to be excellent.

Definitely possible.

Paying off the credit cards and loans would cause utilization to fall to 0%. That would increase score. Also, as months pass, the length of one's credit history increases. Longer positive credit history also increases score.

But, such credit score changes are not necessarily meaningful. As in the Globe & Mail article I mentioned, dropping from 846 to 783 would not be meaningful as far as lenders are concerned. There is no statistically-significant change in the default rate between people in that range.

Sort of like no meaningful change in frostbite risk when the temperature drops from 30°C down to 9°C.

I was told recently by a 35-yr veteran of the banking industry that the highest she'd ever seen was 890. Have to wonder what happened to the other 110.

I'm sure we'll all be comforted to know, when suffering from 30 degree frostbite, that 9 degrees wouldn't be any worse.