What's the highest FICO score?

Posted on: 01 Aug 2024

Every one of us is most acquainted with the FICO score, which also happens to be the most important one for our financial life. To evaluate your creditworthiness and award you credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other loans almost all credit-scoring businesses and lenders depend on FICO ratings. Do you however know the highest FICO score one may obtain? Go ahead and check for yourself.

The FICO rating formula runs from 300 to 850. Technically, therefore, the FICO score cannot rise over 850. Still, achieving 850 on FICO is rather exceptional indeed. This is so because sometimes even very careful credit card users have a score of less than 850. I will mostly concentrate on FICO scores and strategies for ascending the mountain of credit scores.

FICO Score: How Is It Calculated?

Knowing that the FICO ultimate score exists now calls for you to investigate what it takes to earn a FICO score. Working with three credit reporting companies— Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—the FICO model operates via the specifics in your credit record.

The FICO algorithm particularly considers five important elements of your credit history: The FICO algorithm particularly considers five important elements of your credit history:

Are you making timely credit cards, vehicles, student loans, mortgages, and other payments and behaving sensibly? Your score will suffer from any bankruptcies and delinquencies.
The credit use ratio is the proportion of your existing revolving credit limit that you have used. Keeping a lot of your credit limit reduces your score.
Length of credit history: Generally speaking, the better the longer the credit history. Based on your records, you seem competent to manage credit—especially if you have always paid your payments as arranged.
Diversity of credits: One should always have credit cards, an installment credit, and a mortgage on their credit profile.
New credit: Should you have lately applied for several credits, your score may suffer as well.

All the five factors described above are assigned different weights in your FICO score. This then means that, by practicing sound credit management in each of these areas, you set yourself up for credit success. It could be seen that perfect scores are just around the corner if people stick to proper financial behaviors for quite a long.

What Does It Take to Get That Perfect 850 FICO Score?

An 850 FICO means that an individual will have no flaws in credit and must meet all the scoring criteria that are provided. In other words, you require a credit history with no late or missed payments and no maxed-out credit cards. That means:

No credit payment delinquencies, no payments made more than thirty days past due on any credit account
Having very low balances on credit cards. It is advisable to use it for not more than 30% of your total credit limit offered by your credit card company.
Having well-established accounts opened many years ago
Showing you that you can manage a variety of account types such as credit cards, retail, installment, mortgage, auto, etc.
Exclusion of establishment of many credit accounts particularly within a short duration

And, as you can see, getting a perfect 850 credit score is not something that can be easily attained and requires numerous years of practicing financial responsibility. Others are just a matter of time, they happen over some time. To get 850, you need to have a lot of history across different accounts, but sometimes even that is not enough. A single ill-advised financial decision is enough to prevent you from achieving a credit score of 850.

It is almost impossible to achieve a FICO score of more than 800 today; hence, such FICO scores are deemed to be highly optimal. Once your credit score gets to this level you can be eligible for the best rates and terms on the loans. Elevating the final 50 points to the absolute maximum score of 850 is a serious long-term commitment.

How Many People Have A FICO Credit Score Of 850?

It is worth mentioning that only 3% of consumers boast a perfect 850 credit score. A survey by Experian in 2018 revealed that only 1. 4 percent of the populace had FICO scores of 850. Still, that figure has not changed much over the past decade. Therefore, although it is possible to get to that magical land of the credit score mountaintop, very few people do.

FICO Score Distribution

Here is a breakdown of just how rare perfect credit scores are among the general population: Here is a breakdown of just how rare perfect credit scores are among the general population:

850 FICO – 1. 4 percent
FICO scores of 800 to 849 – 14. 3%
700 to 749 FICO – 22. 4 percent 650 to 699 FICO – 20. 9 percent 600 to 649 FICO – 18. 4 percent 550 to 599 FICO – 15. 9 percent 500-549 FICO – 13. 4 percent 450-499 FICO – 11. 9 percent 400-449 FICO – 9. 9 percent 350-
FICO 700-749 – 30. 4 percent
650-699 FICO – 16. 7 percent
550-599 FICO – 9. 3 percent 650-699 FICO – 8. 5 percent 700-749 FICO – 6. 4 percent 750-799 FICO – 3. 2 percent 800-849 FICO – 1. 2 percent 850-899 FICO – 0. 7 percent 900-949 FICO – 0. 3 percent 950-999 FICO –
350-399 FICO – 3. 5 percent, 400-449 FICO – 3 percent, 450-499 FICO – 3. 5 percent, 500-599 FICO – 4. 5 percent
Poor credit score ranges from 300 to 499- 1. 1 percent

From the above example, more than 60 % of people have a FICO score below 750. Therefore, 850 is the highest possible figure that quantifies the elites of consumers with the best credit management traits. If you have an 850 score, congratulations. You are ahead of 99% of people in credit achievement.

What Measures Can I Take to Get the Best FICO Score?

Perhaps only a handful of people may get closer or even reach an 850 FICO score. But you can still aim to continuously improve your credit by:

Checking credit reports and correcting mistakes
Paying all kinds of bills in a way that is always punctual
When using credit cards, it is also important to ensure that balances are kept to a minimum.
However, one should not apply for too many new credits at the same time.
Checking your credit with free services to identify issues
It is advisable to automate payments to ensure that you do not miss payments.
Subscription to credit monitoring services

Healthy credit habits, as it has been emphasized, are not difficult to practice, although they do require time. If you follow the blueprint above, you will see that your credit scores are gradually increasing in the long run. In conclusion, the best FICO score that one can achieve is a result of constant practice.