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...

FICO® Score Distribution Remains Mixed

Based on a fresh look at the national distribution of FICO® 8 Scores, it appears that the profile of credit risk for U.S. consumers, while still mixed, may be slowly returning to a prerecession pattern. As my colleague Andrew Jennings has noted, people with higher FICO® Scores have generally increased...

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...

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...

One Collector's Challenge May Be Another's Opportunity

One could argue that collections is going through a paradigm shift. Over the past decade, technological, social and economic changes have had a profound impact on C&R operations. While the effects vary across countries and regions, all organizations need to adapt to one or more of these developments: Ubiquity of...

Dark Clouds Looming Over Student Loan Industry

My earlier blog post quantified some of the trends we have been seeing in the US student loan industry, namely the precipitous increase in student loan debt. Our ongoing analysis has found another disturbing trend: recent vintages of student loans have noticeably lower FICO® Scores than earlier vintages. This chart...

2013 Bank Priorities Are Remarkably Similar Worldwide

In our latest quarterly survey of US risk managers, we asked bankers about their institutions' priorities for 2013. Overwhelmingly we found that their top priority was increasing return on capital. Coming in as a close second was increasing their use of data to better understand customers. It's a familiar tune—one...

Has Deleveraging in the US Come to an End?

After five years of nearly uninterrupted deleveraging, are American consumers (with a little help from lenders) ready to reverse course and begin taking on more debt? According to our latest quarterly survey of US bank risk professionals, the answer seems to be yes. A large majority (61%) of the 251...

Join Us For FICO World 2013

How are companies using Big Data analytics to understand and collaborate with today’s connected consumer? Join us at FICO World 2013 to discover answers from experts and network with your banking peers. Registration is now open for the conference, which will be held April 30-May 3 in Miami. FICO World...