Japan’s LIFECARD Introduces FICO® Score to Grant More Credit to Existing Customers With Less Risk and Cost

SINGAPORE — 11 December, 2018

• LIFECARD is the first lender in Japan to adopt the FICO® Score to enhance its credit assessment for existing customers.
• The FICO® Score for Japan uses data from the major credit bureaus to provide a wide-angle view of a customer’s credit risk.
• The FICO® Score is the standard measure of U.S. consumer credit risk, and is used in more than 25 countries on 5 continents. More than 10 billion FICO® Scores are purchased each year by lenders for their risk management decisions.

FICO today announced that LIFECARD, a credit card company with more than 5.7 million accounts, is the first lender in Japan to adopt the FICO® Score to enhance its credit assessment for existing customers. Calculating an appropriate and timely offer for a credit limit increase is made more accurate by reassessing customers with the FICO® Score, which analyzes their credit bureau data from all their credit accounts.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/latest-thinking/product-sheet/fico-score-for-international-markets

LIFECARD is also using the FICO® Score to realize risk and cost reduction by better evaluating credit risk eligibility.

Shinichiro Okuyama, executive officer at LIFECARD, said, “Growth in the Japanese banking market continues to be hard-won. A contracting population, ultra-low interest rates, shrinking margins and constrained demand mean that lenders need to find opportunities for innovation. To grow our share-of-wallet we needed a way to differentiate our approach to lending, and offering proactive credit limit increases and personal loan offers to our customers offered us that. Using the FICO Score, we can do this in a responsible and profitable manner.”

FICO® Scores have been available for more than ten years in Japan and are based on credit data at the major credit bureaus. Until now they have only been utilized by financial institutions for loans origination.

“Numerous credit card companies in Japan are using custom risk models for originations but little else,” said Hiroshi Muramoto, country manager for Japan at FICO. “LIFECARD is being innovative in the market, using scoring to help them pursue new directions in account management. By using the FICO Score, they are able to make better decisions and be more competitive in the Japanese market.”

LIFECARD has validated their approach by measuring the FICO Score’s performance and stability. They confirmed its high level of predictive performance using more than 300,000 sample accounts.

“FICO’s scoring expertise is recognized the world over,” said Dan McConaghy, president for FICO Asia-Pacific. “We are seeing its uptake in developing markets to grow lending as well as developed markets to capture more business against competitors. Customers like LIFECARD are a good example of how lenders need to harness technology to improve service and enhance differentiation. The FICO Score allows them to gain a better understanding of their client’s risk profile and tailor an offer to their individual standing and preference.”

About LIFECARD
LIFECARD is providing a wide range of businesses to meet customers' needs such as credit business, prepaid card business, loan business, insurance business, guarantee business, various settlement services, etc. LIFECARD continues to create "Be Unique!" Services by focusing on open innovation, introducing state-of-the-art technology in order to respond to the needs of all partners including card members and franchise merchants . Learn more at http://www.lifecard.co.jp/.

About FICO
FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956 and based in Silicon Valley, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 190 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 100 countries do everything from protecting 2.6 billion payment cards from fraud, to helping people get credit, to ensuring that millions of airplanes and rental cars are in the right place at the right time. Learn more at http://www.fico.com.

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Neil Mirano
Rice Communications for FICO
+65 3157 5680
neil.mirano@ricecomms.com

Saxon Shirley
FICO
+65 9171 0965
saxonshirley@fico.com