FICO® Score Fact Sheet

A credit score is a number that summarizes an individual’s credit risk, based on a snapshot of their credit report at a particular point in time. It helps lenders and others predict how likely people are to make their credit payments on time. It affects whether they can get credit and how much they pay for credit cards, auto loans, mortgages and other kinds of credit.

The most widely-used credit scores are FICO® Scores, the credit scores developed by FICO and available through consumer reporting agencies. Introduced in 1989 in the US, FICO® Scores help lenders make billions of credit decisions every year.