Student Credit Card and Credit Education Blog

Current events and opinions about student credit issues

01.22.08 | FICO 08: What’s new with your credit score?

Posted in Financial Information by Little Miss Platinum

Haven’t figured out what your credit score is? Well, even if you did check it today, you’d find that by the end of 2008, it may be very different. This is because the Fair Issac Corporation (who develops the FICO scores) is working to get Americans closer to more legitimate predictions of how they will handle their credit, be it a credit card or loan.

FICO is predicting that the new scoring system will assist lenders with reducing loan default rates on between 5 and 15 percent. On the bright side, FICO 08 should go easier on consumers who occasionally miss a payment while coming down harder on those who repeatedly do not maintain their accounts. For example, someone will score better if they miss only one obligation, while accurately staying current with three others. However, those with a number of problematic accounts may have their credit score drop.

From my perspective, this is an excellent step in the right direction. The closer the FICO score can predict how people are going to pay, the fewer defaulted loans there will be. This ultimately wastes lenders’ money as it is a loan that will never be paid back – it’s just like throwing money away, which no one likes to do.


The Student Credit Blog is sponsored in part by:


This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.

3 Comments »

  1. Jordan says

    The systems to predict Fico score are getting smarter and smarter everyday, therefore the best practice to increase your Fico would be a sound financial behavior like paying bills on-time and not getting so much debt, etc.

    February 24th, 2009 | #

  2. Credit Card Guy says

    Richard, I cover the answer to this question in detail in the Student Credit Forum. Here is the post: http://forum.studentplatinum.com/frustrated-t42.html

    February 11th, 2008 | #

  3. richard gray says

    how can I HAVE THE FICO CORRECT INCORRECT INFORMATION ON MY SCORE AND PROFILE?

    January 24th, 2008 | #

Leave a comment

RSS feed for these comments. | TrackBack URI