Rachel Bell

Earlier this year, my colleague, Can Arkali, shared the results of an analytic validation of the FICO^® Safe Driving Score.  Since then, we’ve been working to enhance the prediction of future collisions and this week we are announcing the launch of FICO Safe Driving Scores, version 2.0.  The FICO^® Safe Driving Score utilizes driving based telematics data c…

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 people into the lowest (300-499) and the highest (800-850) segm…

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 its highest level since October 2008. Some 18.3 percent of consumers have FICO^® Scores in this ra…

More than ever, consumers are interested in their credit scores and credit reports. They ask questions when banking, paying bills online and shopping for a loan. This puts pressure on lenders to equip their employees with good answers to such questions. (myFICO.com is one source for those answers.) Unfortunately, this work is made tougher when credible sources get eve…

Last month I posted that the national distribution of FICO^® 8 Scores has had two major shifts during the recession. Some readers were puzzled that the observed shifts weren’t significantly larger, in light of the sour US economy. Actually, what appear to be small national shifts are quite dramatic changes, in FICO’s experience. The reality is that, despite all t…

A comparison of nationwide FICO^® Scores from 2005-2011 illustrates that score distribution has remained relatively stable at a national level. However a close look at the numbers suggests that U.S. lenders have experienced two distinct phases of consumer credit risk in the recession thus far. Early in the recession, lenders saw a sizeable increase in the number of…

In a recent joint “TweetChat” with Bankrate.com, we fielded hundreds of questions from participants on the specifics of a FICO^® Score. Their questions ranged from basic to complex, reminding us that as consumers become more credit savvy, the complexities of the FICO Score can still be confusing even to a student of credit. Here are some of the most popular questions…

Recently I blogged about common FICO^® Score myths. Here’s another widespread misconception: People believe that their credit scores should improve when a credit card account is closed. Not true. In all likelihood, closing a revolving credit account either will not affect the FICO^® Score at all, or it will cause the score to drop slightly. The myth seems to be b…