New FICO score will help some, hurt others

Posted by Joe on December 19th, 2007

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Fair Isaac Corporation, otherwise known as FICO, has created a new scoring system that will change how potential lenders may view your credit history.

FICO is a household name that is synonymous with credit scores, particularly to anyone that has ever applied for a home loan, auto loan or credit card.  FICO estimates that 90% of major banks use their scoring methodology to analyze the credit worthiness of consumers.

The new FICO score, officially called FICO 08, was created to more accurately predict the credit risk of an individual.  It will be more lenient on people who may have had a few credit slip ups in the past but otherwise have had fairly responsible credit practices and much more harsh on those who repeatedly make credit mistakes.

FICO provided these very helpful examples of how the new FICO 08 score may impact differnt types of people based off of their credit history.

This is great news for consumers that are actively working to improve their credit and adopting healthy credit habits and even more reason for those people that have habitually poor credit to take moves to improve.

The FICO 08 score also makes it extremely important to have a full grasp on the contents of your credit report as inaccuracies could cost you once the new formula begins calculating scores.  The simplest and most effective way to get a full grasp of your current credit profile is to sign up for a credit report monitoring service.  These services will give you access to your credit report, credit score and alert you to any changes on your credit report.

All of the credit bureaus, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, provide these services and we have reviewed and compared all these credit report monitoring services for the benefit of our readers.

• Reader Question: How do I get my FICO score for free?
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• Equifax offers free 3-in-1 credit report and 3 bureau credit report monitoring
• Reader Question: Which credit score do lenders use?
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