Word: fico
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...that a borrower with a certain credit score would default on a mortgage. For example, it predicted that a loan to a borrower with a 680 score had a 1 in 144, or 0.7%, chance of becoming delinquent over the life of the loan; a person with a 700 FICO score would have a 1 in 288 chance, or just...
...ways of measuring creditworthiness to bolster their lending decisions. The shift comes at a time when the financial industry is suffering from a record number of loan defaults, particularly in the mortgage business. Industry experts say the widely used credit scores, the most famous of which is called the FICO, have not proved as effective in ferreting out bad borrowers as many lenders had anticipated. (Read TIME's "Bailout Report Card...
...Credit scores, first developed in the late 1950s, try to boil down to a single number whether a person is likely to pay back a loan. The most widely used ranking of individual creditworthiness is the FICO score. Fair Isaac Corp., which computes the number, won't say exactly what goes into the formula, but it is essentially a summation of an individual's credit history - which loans were paid off and which weren't - rolled up into a three-digit number between 300 and 850. The higher the number, the more likely you are to pay back a loan...
...average rate on a 60-month used car loan, 7.54%, has actually been drifting downward. (Those 0% financing deals still exist, too, from struggling car companies desperate to move inventory.) The difference is, you're probably not going to get that rate (or any at all) unless your FICO score is north of 700, whereas six months or a year ago, a score as low as 620 would have gotten you behind the wheel. "Some of this just represents moving back to standards that were in place five or six years ago," says Paul Taylor, chief economist at the National...
...important? Because the first thing banks and other lenders do when you apply for a car loan, a new credit card or that mortgage for your dream house is check out your credit report and ranking. Your credit score, often called a FICO score after the Fair Isaac Corporation, which calculates the number, gives lenders a snapshot of your financial life and can determine whether you'll qualify for that loan and how much you'll pay for it. The scale ranges from 300 to 850; the average consumer's score...