Are Russian Consumers Under Stress?

This week FICO and the National Bureau of Credit Histories (NBKI), Russia’s leading credit bureau, released data showing that Russian consumers made more late payments during the first quarter of 2012. This slight increase wouldn’t be worth noting, except that it marks the first decrease in the FICO® Credit Health...

Even in a Recession, UK Cardholders Paying on Time

Even as figures show the UK stretching out its recession, cardholders have clearly learned the importance of keeping their card payments timely. Today FICO released data on Q1 card payments that show one-cycle delinquent balances, as a percentage of all balances, falling to less than 5 percent, the lowest point...

Should We Trust Your RWA Models?

 According to today’s Financial Times, 63% of investors have lost faith in bank’s internal models to measure their risk-weighted assets (RWA). In an article titled “Investors lose faith in banks’ RWA models,” the paper says that many investors surveyed recently by Barclays would like to see big banks use...

The skinny on FICO® Scores and inquiries

One of the largest misconceptions around how the FICO® Score works involves its treatment of credit inquiries, and what happens to a score when a consumer applies for credit. In this post, I’ll answer some of the most common questions we receive on this subject, from lenders and consumers alike....

Data asset or data liability?

One distinguishing factor of successful businesses is how well they capture, maintain, access and interpret data. Why is it, then, that many businesses fail to adequately protect their data assets, and even more fail to provide for sufficient contingency should data become lost, damaged, corrupt or compromised? Data compromise remains...

Customer centricity and the halo effect

Many FICO clients are seeing benefits from customer-level decisioning. But some of the impacts are a bit tricky to quantify. One of these is the so-called “halo effect.” It’s intuitive that customers who have a good experience with one type of account are likely to be more receptive to offers...

Is There Really Safety In Numbers?

In a week where FICO has published its interactive fraud map showing how European card fraud has changed over the last 5 years, and reflected on the considerable reductions across the UK card fraud market, there was a cautionary tale issued by the mass media. The Guardian has published an...

How European card fraud has changed

American philosopher George Santayana is credited with saying that those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Today, FICO released an interactive fraud map showing how card fraud has changed over the last 5 years across Europe. While many of these trends have been previously observed, comparing...

Regulations still choking European credit

“Asphyxiating” is a strong word, but that’s the word used at a recent meeting of banking leaders in Spain to describe the effect Basel regulations are having on credit. The meeting, hosted by FICO and the publication Expansion, demonstrated bankers’ frustration and showed that regulators are still searching for the...

Putting the customer at the center of every decision

My fellow blogger Rita Chakravarti recently noted that customer centricity has become a central theme in her conversations with banking professionals. I’ll add that most financial institutions are tackling this in stages. We’re seeing them move toward full customer-level management capabilities gradually, and reap profit gains at each stage for...

Gaining Speed to Market with Best Practice Collections

These days, collection managers face many tough questions. How can we do more with the same resources? How can we make sure to work the right delinquent customers? Can we improve the timing of collection actions? How can we improve kept promise rates and offer better customer service? And, how...

Death to the Mag Stripe?

Transaction World Magazine just published an article by FICO blog author Doug Clare, "EMV: The Gold Standard 'Over There.' Does it Spell Death to the Mag Stripe?" In the article, Doug discusses EMV adoption for cards in Europe and the U.S., and how this standard is superior to the traditional...

Call for Entries: FICO Decision Management Awards

We've just announced a call for entries in the second FICO Decision Management Awards. The awards honor FICO clients that have achieved outstanding results from their use of analytics and decision management technology to grow their businesses, manage risk and reduce costs. Nominations are due August 1, 2012, and winners...

Extending Credit to New Markets: Q&A with Itaú Unibanco

Itaú Unibanco is Brazil’s largest private sector bank and the ninth largest globally. But when it launched its credit card as an initial entry into the highly competitive Mexican market, it had to adopt startup-style strategies. Key to the effort was an origination process using FICO® Capstone® Decision Accelerator to...