Credit Line Increase Trends: A Mixed Bag

Since the recession of 2008-2009, there has been quite a bit of discussion about credit lines. Are they going up? Are they going down? Are banks still aggressively managing their risk? Based on the US data I’ve seen, it looks like a mixed bag. On one hand, the number of...

FICO World Preview: Closing the Risk and Fraud Gaps

As the hero in the cult 1960s television program The Prisoner proclaimed: “I am not a number. I am a free man!” Of course, he wasn’t — he was Number 6, a prisoner in a very Big Brother village prison. Like Number 6, today’s banking customers complain that banks have...

Credit Picture Getting Brighter for Small Businesses

The availability of credit for small businesses has been a concern throughout the economic recovery. Our latest quarterly survey of US bank risk managers indicates we may be turning a corner. Not only are the bankers we surveyed generally optimistic about the credit market, they are expecting the credit situation...

US Risk Managers Bullish On Housing Recovery

I’m always curious to see what insight our quarterly survey of US bank risk professionals will yield. Here’s a finding that jumped out at me from this quarter’s survey: respondents think the housing recovery is for real. By now, we’ve all seen media reports of rising home prices in many...

Risk Tops European Banks’ Analytic Priorities — But Should It?

Analytic investments are priorities for banks across Europe, who are looking not better risk management, better identification of customer needs and better capital management. This is evident in the results of FICO and Efma’s seventh European Credit Risk Outlook, published on Tuesday. More than 40% of respondents say they will...

Challenging Assumptions About Consumer Deleveraging in the US

Conventional wisdom holds that US consumers have been deleveraging—either voluntarily or involuntarily—since the recession of 2008-2009. While there is ample evidence that many consumers have, in fact, been deleveraging for the past five years, does that mean that all consumer segments have done so? The data indicates that one large...

The Great Consumer Releveraging of 2013 … or Not

As I’ve discussed previously, bankers seem to think years of deleveraging by US consumers will finally end in 2013. In our last quarterly survey of bankers, 61% of respondents said consumers will be applying for more new credit and trying to bump up the limits on existing credit accounts over...

New Russian Borrowers Drive Late Payments Higher

One of the challenges in any market experiencing rapid credit growth is getting new borrowers to understand how to manage their credit. The strain is showing in Russia, as shown in our quarterly snapshot of Russian borrower performance, the FICO® Credit Health Index, released yesterday by FICO and NBKI, Russia’s...

Is Consumer Credit Underwriting Looser?

Last month I wrote about growing optimism of US bank risk managers. A large majority of those polled expect consumers over the next six months will be applying for more new credit, asking for higher credit limits and carrying larger balances. Is their optimism well-founded? We all know that it...

Are UK Cardholders Clinging to the Life Raft?

Over the past few quarters, I’ve commented on the generally positive card management trends shown by UK cardholders. It appeared that people were making more timely payments in order to protect that old reliable life raft of economic storms — the credit card. Our latest UK cards data, released yesterday,...