You know about scores, but do you know YOUR score?

Posted by Robert Duque-Ribeiro, FICO VP and general manager, Scores Business Unit

Last week’s New York Times article on how personal finance expert John Ulzheimer keeps his FICO® Score high reminded me how many banking professionals I meet don’t know their score. In fact, I’d wager that the percentage of U.S. bankers who know their FICO score isn’t much higher than the percentage of the general population.

This seems more than a little odd. If you work in the credit industry, you know that your FICO® Score is behind most lending decisions. And credit professionals need credit just as much as anyone else.

At our last FICO World™ conference, we had a contest to see which of the assembled bankers, insurers and regulators had the highest FICO® Score. Four people tied for the top with scores of 816. Here’s my suggestion: If you don’t know whether you would have tied with them, come just below or fallen well below, check out your score. If nothing else, you’ll be modeling the behavior you want your bank’s customers to follow.