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...

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...

To Boost Customer Centricity, Focus on Your High Spenders

Many banks have automated rules in place that decline card transactions indicative of high fraud risk. In so doing, they block a large portion of fraudulent transactions. But they are also declining legitimate purchases from high-spending cardholders, who may decide to take their card business elsewhere. A FICO study found...

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...

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...

Patterns of New-to-Credit Consumers

What's the credit profile of “new-to-credit” consumers? FICO staff recently presented new research on this topic at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Financial Empowerment Convening. Our analysis showed that for this population learning how to use credit, responsible management does lead to improving credit scores and greater access to credit....

Is Growing Student Loan Debt Impacting FICO® Scores?

As students incur more student loan debt, lenders and investors in student loans are asking how this is affecting US consumers’ FICO® Scores. New FICO research provides interesting insights. With education costs rapidly outpacing inflation, more consumers are taking out student loans to pay for their education. Looking at a...

FICO® Scores Reflect Slow Economic Recovery

Our FICO Labs team has taken a fresh look at national distribution of FICO® 8 Scores. With a couple of interesting exceptions, we found that consumer scores are continuing their slow return to a pre-recession pattern. The first two years of the recession (2008-2009) moved the scores for millions of...

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...

More consumers nearing perfect FICO® Scores, but are scores improving?

My colleagues in FICO Labs monitor FICO® Scores and how they move over time. In our most recent review, we continue to see the effects of consumers’ scores moving up AND down. At the high end of the score distribution, the number of consumers in the 800-850 range is at...