How much can credit scores rise?

Considering that it is so incredibly important for a person’s financial well-being, there is a surprising amount of mystery surrounding the FICO method of evaluating credit scores.

According to FICO itself, examining its own data revealed some solid information about how much a person could expect their credit score to rise after a delinquency falls off of their report.

Their primary findings were that one delinquency removed from an account holder over a three month period typically resulted in a 14-point rise in their credit score while a removal of all outstanding delinquencies over the same period showed a 33-point increase.

Although this might not seem like a dramatic increase, they also point out that the penalty for major negatives on an account decreases over time, so the recovery after it actually falls off can be modest.