FICO, Experian, and Finicity announced the launch of a new credit score, the UltraFICO Score. FICO partnered with Experian and Finicity on the new score to help lenders safely provide further access to credit or credit potentially at better terms to consumers with limited credit history or who had previous financial distress. With distribution from Experian and new aggregated data from Finicity, the UltraFICO Score improves access to credit by including consumer-permissioned data. The new score may impact approximately 15 million consumers who currently do not have a FICO Score.
The UltraFICO Score incorporates data found outside of the traditional credit file such as information from checking accounts, savings accounts and money market accounts. This data could result in a higher score for the seven out of 10 consumers who maintain a balance of $400 and have not had a recent negative balance in either their checking or savings account on a monthly basis.
“The benefits to consumers meeting these criteria with new or minimal credit history is greater, with roughly 80% seeing an increase in score and 40% seeing an increase of 20 points or higher,” said David Shellenberger, senior director of scoring and predictive analytics at FICO.
The UltraFICO Score helps empower lenders by turning a loan application from a potential “no” into a possible “yes,” growing a lender’s business. The new score was designed to be particularly effective for consumers who fall in between scores in the high 500s and low 600s, or just below a lender’s score cut-off. The score was also designed to easily integrate into current lending strategies, and origination and account management systems.
HW sat down with Jim Wehmann, executive vice president of scores at FICO, to discuss the impact UltraFICO Score can make on both consumers and lenders.
The new UltraFICO Score is scheduled for launch as a pilot program in early 2019 and is expected to be available to lenders by mid-2019.
