@BSCHIEBEone They don't, but the loss of an installment account might hurt the score, especially if it is your only installment loan. It hurts the portion that is credit mix, and since having an installment loan with low balance, so substantially paid off does help your score, it might hurt installment loan utilization percentage as well. It all depends on whether you have other installment loans with low balances. It is not paying it off early that results in a lower score, it is loss of the account in your credit mix and utilization calculations. For very high scores you need at least 1 installment loan and 3 credit cards. The installment loans need to be paid below 50% of original loan amounts. Only 1 of the 3 credit cards should report a balance, with the other 2 having a zero balance. The one card reporting a balance can be paid before the due date, but after the statement reflects the balance. It is what they call AZEO...all zero except 1, and the balance on it should be under 29% of that cards credit limit, and less than 8.9% of all credit cards limits combined. That will maximize your revolving credit utilization, but is in fico 08 and fico 09 a point in time metric. If you lose points due to high utilization one month, paying them down to maximize utilization will recover every single point lost...in other words...utilization carries no history. It will in the future fico 10 T, the T in that score stands for trended data.
