FICO® has announced its newest credit score models – the FICO Score 10 and FICO Score 10T – with a focus on consumer personal loans and credit trends.
The new FICO Scores aim to reward those who pay lenders on time and give lenders more precision and predictability powers when making lending decisions, said Jim Wehmann, the executive vice president for Scores at FICO. He said the new scores are expected to be released this summer.
“We continuously innovate using the latest, most robust data, while maintaining consistency with previous models to ensure backward compatibility and minimize operational changes required to adopt a new score,” he said. “Many lenders want to leverage the most comprehensive data possible to make precise lending decisions. By offering a score that taps further into trended data, we’re able to give lenders greater flexibility and predictive power, as well as ease of integration.”
What Do the New FICO Scores Mean for Consumers?
The FICO Score changes can affect consumers differently, according to Wehmann.
The biggest changes include:
Personal loans are going to be weighted more heavily. Borrowers who consolidate their debt with a personal loan and then obtain additional debt might experience a negative change in their score.
The new scores are tracking consumer credit trends, meaning their credit behavior, such as paying off debt or incurring more and more debt during the last 24 months, is factored in.
Credit utilization also is factor in the new scores. The amount owed on credit card versus the total amount of credit available affects consumers’ scores, with the lower ratio the better. This makes paying credit card debt off in a timely manner even more important.