Fair Isaac Creates New Credit Score

Fair Isaac & Co. Inc., San Rafael, Calif., has created a new credit score that is generated from nontraditional sources.Tom Grudnowski, chief executive of Fair Isaac, said the new product, FICO Expansion Score, "sets a new standard for helping the underserved marketplace." Mr. Grudnowski and Craig Dillon, vice president for scoring solutions, told a teleconference on the new product that there are 50 million American consumers who do not have enough data in one of the credit repositories to generate a traditional credit score. The new product uses the same scoring range as Fair Isaac's NextGen product. Mr. Dillon said most of the interest in the product has come from the mortgage industry. While launching the product, Fair Isaac has been in discussions with the government-sponsored enterprises and others in the secondary market. While there has been considerable excitement about the product, no secondary market participant has signed off on it yet, he said.