What’s in your FICO score?

With mortgages in mind, your past 24 months of credit behavior, called trended data, will be front and center with the new FICO 10 and FICO 10T scoring models being released this summer.

Paying bills on time and keeping balances in check are likely going to see a gain in a score. Consumers with recent delinquency or high utilization are likely going to see a downward shift (in the score) and depending on the severity, and recency of the delinquency it could be significant, all according to Dave Shellenberger, vice president of FICO’s product management.

FICO 10 and FICO 10T will be more predictive, allowing lenders to extend credit to more borrowers at better rates overall, according to Joanne Gaskin, FICO’s vice president of Scores and Analytics. FICO 10T purports to reduce mortgage default rates by up to 17%.

FICO® 10 T Considers Trended Data for the First Time

The FICO® Score 10 Suite will continue to consider the five main factors used in previous FICO® models to determine your FICO® Score: payment history amounts owed, age of credit history, credit mix, and new credit accounts.

Unlike previous FICO® versions, however, the FICO® 10 T variant expands into new territory, with the goal of giving lenders a more precise assessment of your credit risk. FICO® 10 T does something that no other FICO® Score has ever done: It considers your trended data.

Trended data, sometimes called time-series data, is information on your credit reports showing how you've managed your accounts over the previous 24 months, creating a picture of your financial situation during that time. And while trended data has been offered to lenders, it had never been included as a metric in any of your credit scores until another scoring model, VantageScore® 4.0, began considering it in 2017.