Fair Isaac Touting Study on Non-Traditional Credit Score

Isaac Corporation, the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today announced that the company’s FICO® Expansion™ credit risk score has proven in a major lending-industry study to be the first strong and reliable credit score for assessing the risk of millions of Americans who have little or no credit information on file at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

The study also demonstrated that FICO Expansion score aligns with the company’s industry-standard Classic FICO score for quicker adoption by lenders and combined coverage of as many as 50 million more American consumers than can be addressed by any competing credit risk model.

Among the study’s participants were more than a dozen of the largest lenders from the credit card, auto finance and mortgage industries. By industry, some of the participants included:

• Bankcard: HSBC, First PREMIER
• Auto: DaimlerChrysler Financial Services, DriveTime
• Mortgage: Freddie Mac, HSBC, First Franklin, Option One

“Industry results clearly show that FICO Expansion score enables U.S. lenders to confidently assess the credit risk of nearly 50 million Americans who have little or no credit information on file at the major credit reporting agencies,” said Ron Totaro, vice president of Global Scoring Solutions for Fair Isaac. “This study demonstrates that FICO Expansion score delivers the same caliber of highly predictive, objective risk evaluation for these credit-underserved consumers that businesses have come to expect from all our FICO scores.”

FICO Expansion score taps non-traditional sources of consumer data not found at the national credit reporting agencies in order to assess the credit risk of adults who have minimal or no credit history on file. By using FICO Expansion score for these consumers – who include recent immigrants and young adults – businesses can make more financial services available to more people who have missed out on opportunities simply because they lack a traditional credit history.

In perhaps the most comprehensive retrospective analysis ever undertaken on a credit risk scoring model, leading lenders found that FICO Expansion score:

• Consistently rank-orders by account risk – Retrospective analysis confirmed that the FICO® Expansion™ scoring model performs well. It consistently assigned lower scores to consumers who later had more delinquencies and charge-offs, while it gave higher scores to consumers who later had fewer delinquencies and charge-offs.
• Expands scorable population – Participating lenders received FICO Expansion scores for 60 to 90 percent (depending on industry segment and product) of the consumers addressed in this study who have little or no credit information on file at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
• Identifies substantial credit-worthy population – Based on these results, significant opportunities exist today for lenders to safely grant credit within the no-file and thin-file consumer populations. Thirty-five percent of credit-underserved consumers in this study had FICO Expansion scores above 640. While lenders’ risk tolerance varies by portfolio and industry, the credit risk associated with FICO Expansion scores of 640 or higher typically satisfies many lenders’ approval requirements.
• Provides close alignment to Classic FICO scores – FICO Expansion score aligned with the same Classic FICO® credit score used today by most businesses, including 90 of the 100 largest U.S. banks. In this evaluation the marginal credit risk of a group of consumers who received a given FICO Expansion score was very similar to the risk of the same group of consumers receiving the identical Classic FICO score.

“These validation results clearly impressed participating lenders, particularly in the score’s proven ability to objectively and consistently rank-order consumers by their likelihood to repay a debt,” said Lisa Nelson, vice president of product management for Fair Isaac. “Equally as important, the confirmation that FICO Expansion score aligns with Classic FICO score means that lenders can quickly and confidently incorporate FICO Expansion score into their current credit decisioning strategies.”