FICO Research Scoring Your Customers — How Often Is Often Enough?

Background: Lenders are asking: How often should I refresh the FICO^® Scores of my existing customers? How many of my customers will have a material change in their score in the short term? How much will their scores change, and over what period of time?

If lenders aren’t getting updated account management scores frequently enough, they run the risk of making decisions with stale information on a notable portion of their accounts. FICO^® Scores provide a holistic view of the consumer’s credit behaviors — tipping lenders off to deterioration in a consumer’s repayment performance that may not have yet shown up in the lender’s master file data.

FICO examined the movement of FICO^® Scores over time to determine how often lenders should refresh their existing customers’ scores. This paper highlights the key findings of the study, and offers guidance for best practices.