 TITLE: Can an Installment Loan Help Improve Your Credit Score? CONTENT: The most important element of your FICO® Score☉ is your payment history. This factor alone accounts for 35% of your score, which is why consistently making all bill payments on time is one of the surest ways to improve and maintain excellent credit.\nBecause installment loans require monthly payments over an extended period of time, they give you the opportunity to make regular on-time payments that help you improve your score. On the flip side, missing even one payment or paying 30 days or more late will negatively impact your credit score. Choose payment options, like automatic debit, that will reduce the likelihood that you miss paying your bill.\nA less weighty, but still important, factor in your score is credit mix. Since the FICO scoring algorithm is chiefly looking for a combination of both installment and revolving credit, adding an installment loan to your credit report when you've only used credit cards, or vice versa, can help give your scores a lift.\nCredit mix accounts for 10% of your FICO® Score, so it's not as important as other factors. Also, since the potential downsides of taking on credit you can't manage are so consequential, it's not advisable to take on new credit solely to improve your credit mix. END