“Figures provided by FICO Inc. show that 25.5 percent of consumers — nearly 43.4 million people — now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. It’s unlikely they will be able to get credit cards, auto loans or mortgages under the tighter lending standards banks now use,” according to the AP. Historically, just 15 percent of the 170 million consumers with active credit accounts, or 25.5 million people, fell below 599, according to data posted on Myfico.com.The recession, tight lending practices by banks, and unemployment have caught up to the consumer credit market, and the trend is likely to worsen.

Banks, particularly regional and community financial firms, are struggling with defaults on both residential and commercial mortgages. To stay out of the clutches of the FDIC, they have become remarkably cautious about lending, even to people with good credit scores.

The number of people who have been unemployed for over six months is now in the millions and nearly 25 million Americans are out of work. This population is not likely to see their credit scores repaired for years.

The young, for years targets for credit card companies, are unemployed at higher rates than people over 25. That means that this “feeder” population for credit cards is falling and some of these people noe have no credit scores at all.

Another trend that has hurt credit scores immensely is the disappearance of home equity loans which were once taken out by huge numbers of Americans who had houses worth more than their mortgages. Now, more than 11 million mortgages in the US are underwater. People are abandoning homes that are being foreclosed upon. Either of those actions severely damages credit ratings.

One of the long-term effects of low credit scores is a likely long-term drop in consumer spending. People often cannot afford to buy things by paying cash. And austerity is the rule of the day.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Millions of Americans have seen their credit scores fall amongst the lowest levels possible. FICO is reporting that almost 44 million people, 25.5 % of consumers, currently have a credit score less than 600. A credit score this low makes a borrower a very high risk for lenders. These low credit scores will make it almost impossible for these consumers to obtain a mortgage, auto loans, or credit cards. Over the past two years the amount of people with credit scores below 600 has gone up by 2.4 million people.

A very important group to look at is those with moderate credit scores, 650 to 699. The amount of people in this bracket is currently 11.9 percent of consumers, down from 12 percent in 2008. While the drop off is not that significant it is worth noting that the average number of consumers with these credit scores is usually 15 percent.

The consumers with moderate FICO credit scores could be in the most trouble when it comes to lending. Consumers with scores below 600 most likely would not try to borrower but those with moderate scores may try to obtain loans. In previous years these were seen as good credit scores for obtaining loans but standards have toughened and these scores aren’t as good as they once were. These tightened standards may make it much tougher for these people to obtain loans, especially with the best mortgage rates.

There are some positives when looking at the trends in our consumer’s credit score. The amount of consumers with an 800 credit score, a perfect score, has gone up recently. Currently 17.9 percent of consumers have a perfect score. This is significantly larger than the past average with is about 13 percent. These consumers with good credit scores should have no trouble obtaining any type of loan.

It is pretty easy to ruin a good credit credit score but it can me very difficult to fix credit scores.

Source: totalmortgage.com

Even though it’s more important than ever to be familiar with your credit score and what affects that crucial number, experts say a lot of Americans don’t know nearly as much as they should about what they do that can impact their score. WalletPop got on the phone with John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education at Credit.com to find out more. We also caught up with Barry Paperno, consumer operations manager for FICO, via email to ask him to spill some credit score secrets.

For instance, many people think that if they pay their bills on time, their credit score must be good. Right? Wrong, say our experts. Even if you always pay on time, if your cards are close to being maxed out, your score isn’t going to be as high as it could be, since borrowing up to the hilt looks like a risk factor to the credit bureaus. Surprised? Read on to find out five more credit secrets that can help you get the credit score you deserve.

1. Pay off revolving debt first. There are two different kinds of debt most of us carry: installment debts, which are generally secured by collateral (such as a car loan), and revolving debt, such as credit card balances. Since credit card balances are unsecured — the company can’t repossess the spoils of your last shopping spree if you don’t pay up — they’re viewed as much riskier in the FICO equation. As a result, paying off revolving debt boosts your credit score more than paying off a comparable amount of installment debt. “Paying off installment debt has such a small impact on your score,” says Ulzheimer. “Last year, I paid off a $284,000 mortgage and my score went up four points.” In other words, put that overtime check, bonus or tax refund toward credit card bills if you want the most bang for your high-score buck.

2. Payments to collection agencies don’t boost your score. By the time a debt goes to a third-party collection firm, the original lender (your credit card company, for instance) has already written off the loan as a loss and noted that delinquency on your report. While there are a host of good reasons — such as not getting sued and not being pestered with phone calls at all hours — to pay the bill once a third party collector has it, those payments won’t count toward your FICO score and won’t erase the notation of delinquency.

Likewise, if you get dinged with an insufficient funds fee at your bank and “retaliate” by closing the account or not putting any more money into it, you can get slapped with a collection action by your bank that will negatively impact your score. “In addition to bank account debt, such collection accounts can also arise from utility bills, parking tickets, and even library fines – and can often impact your score as much as unpaid credit card or loan debt,” Paperno warns. Bottom line: Pay those bills before they’re sent to a collection agency if you want to preserve your score.

3. Accentuate the positive. While you obviously want to make sure that black marks like missed payments don’t stay on your report any longer than necessary, it’s perfectly okay and even desirable to have old accounts that were in good standing still listed. For instance, say you paid off a car loan and never made a late payment on it. While you could lobby the bureaus to take that information off your report, it’s more beneficial to leave it on, says Ulzheimer. “This is a great example of when less is more. Don’t ask them to take it off if it’s in good standing.”

4. Opening and closing accounts can lower your score. “FICO’s research has found that opening a new account is predictive of increased risk, and opening any type of credit account or loan action can lower one’s score,” explains Paperno. The good news, he adds, is that your score will rise back to its original level within a few months if you keep the balance low and make your payments on time.

Closing cards can ding you because it skews your credit utilization ratio — that is, how much of your available credit you’ve used — when that line of credit suddenly vanishes. For this reason, experts say to use all your cards at least occasionally. An unused card does you no good if the issuer cancels it due to inactivity.

5. Borrowing more to pay down your debt is dicey. Despite the fact that Americans are often pitched offers of “consolidation” loans by their bank or mortgage lender, taking on more debt to eliminate your credit card bills is a risky proposition. “You’re borrowing from Peter to pay Paul,” says Ulzheimer. Since most consolidation loans are home equity loans backed by your house, failure to get a handle on your spending and pay off your debts as intended could have catastrophic consequences, he points out. “If you miss these payments, the down side is much more significant.” There’s also the fact, as we pointed out above, that opening new accounts can at least temporarily lower your score.

However, taking out an installment loan to pay off your credit card bills could prove beneficial — with one significant caveat. As Paperno points out, installment debt doesn’t drag down your score the way a bunch of maxed out credit cards can, so if — and this is the big “if” — you have the discipline to pay off your cards with that new loan money and stop using the cards until the installment loan is paid off, you could raise your score. But as Paperno points out, it takes a super-sized helping of discipline in order to make this tactic successful.

Source: walletpop.com

Beware the Web, where you’ll see plenty of claims that short sales will save your credit, simple as that. But there’s nothing simple about deciding whether to sell your house in a foreclosure or in a short sale, which means you sell the property for less than you owe the bank. And in most cases, going through either process will wreck your credit score.

“Both short sales and foreclosures are considered negative by the score, because our data shows us it’s very predictive of future credit risk,” Tom Quinn, Fair Isaac Corp.’s vice president of FICO scores, said. “The claim that doing a short sale is not going to hurt your score is false. It’s inaccurate.”

Credit scores, which are designed to assess how likely it is that consumers will uphold their side of the bargain, look at the severity (are we talking bankruptcy or a late car payment?), frequency (have you skipped a payment once, or have you missed a bunch?), and recently (did you miss a payment last month or last year?) of items on your credit report.

This is not to say that there aren’t some instances where short sales are better. If a borrower is current at the point of a short sale, for instance, then the consumer’s credit score won’t sink as far as it would have if he hadn’t made a mortgage payment for six months. Still, Fair Isaac says that the benefit from not having prior delinquencies on file pales when compared with the hit a score takes from a short sale.

If you’re having mortgage trouble, seek help right away from a housing counselor or an attorney. Realtors are the go-to professionals to learn about the local housing market and what it takes to sell your home.

But they aren’t credit experts. And don’t pay someone a lot of money if they promise to quickly rehab your credit score after foreclosure. Credit scores are forgiving — over time.

Source: thestate.com

The credit score is often the determining factor when it comes to getting approved for a loan or mortgage. For those who do get approved, the score can determine the interest rate that is charged. Having a score just two small points below the threshold for the best rates can cost an individual thousands of dollars. Following some tips for raising your credit score will help prevent that from happening.

Raising the score takes time and any attempts at quick fixes can easily backfire. The key is for an individual to practice responsible credit management over a long period. There are online calculators, including one provided by FICO, one of the major entities that determine credit scores. Reviewing these tools will illustrate just how much money individuals can save by improving their credit scores.

The most obvious way to improve the score is to pay bills on time. The longer period the bills are paid timely, the better the credit score will be. If an account goes into collections, subsequently paying it off will not remove the account from a credit report until seven years have passed. Therefore, individuals should contact the creditor once it is determined that the account cannot be paid on time to see if alternate payment arrangements can be made.

Additional guidelines include keeping outstanding credit card balances low and paying off debt rather than juggling it between cards. Individuals should not close cards in order to raise the score or open cards in order to increase credit. Those new to managing credit should not open a lot of new accounts too quickly because this act will lower the average account age and could make the individual appear as a credit risk. Being considered a risk is worse than the alternative of having little credit information.

Paying bills on time in order to avoid delinquencies or a collections situation is a good way to positively impact a credit report. Other tips for raising your credit score include maintaining low credit card balances and avoiding the act of shifting debt. In addition, exercising good judgment when opening and closing credit card accounts will have a positive impact on the credit score.

Do you need a home, car or other type of loan but have poor credit? Well, it is possible to get an Adverse Credit Loan You can also find out how to get poor credit credit cards to give you a line of credit and improve your credit score.

Q: What’s the fastest way to boost my credit score?

For most people, the fastest way to improve your credit score is to pay down your credit card balances.

About one-third of your FICO score (the score most lenders use) is based on your credit-utilization ratio, which is the total of your credit card balances divided by the total of your credit card limits. It’s how much you’ve charged that counts, regardless of whether you pay your balance in full each month. A good target is to use 20 percent or less of your available credit; a lower percentage is better.

“One of the common complaints we hear from consumers is they feel their scores are inappropriately low — in the 600s [on a scale of 300 to 850] — even though they have never been reported late on any credit account,” says Craig Watts, of FICO. “Such people almost always have high balances — and commensurately high utilization rates — on several credit cards, and that lowers their scores.”

An example at FICO’s Score Simulator shows how a hypothetical customer with a FICO score of 707 could raise the score to as high as 777 by reducing the balances on all revolving accounts by 90 to 100 percent over 24 months. This example takes into account the benefits of keeping accounts open longer, but paying down balances faster could improve your score almost as much. “How fast a lower balance can be reflected in one’s score really depends on the lender,” Watts says. Many lenders send data updates to the credit bureaus once a month. “Depending on where your account payment falls in your lender’s data-reporting cycle, your new balance could show up on your credit report within several days — or it can take several weeks to appear.”

You can also improve your utilization ratio by increasing your available credit: “If you have never missed a payment and are a good customer, consider asking your creditors to increase your credit limit on the cards you use,” says Maxine Sweet of the credit bureau Experian.

Closing unused accounts, on the other hand, could hurt your utilization ratio because you will be lowering your available credit. If your card company starts to charge an annual fee, which many are doing now, then it may still be worthwhile to close the account and take a temporary hit. Just don’t open or close accounts or make dramatic changes in the way you use credit within three to six months of applying for a mortgage, auto or other loan whose terms are based on your risk, Sweet says.

Correcting any mistakes in your credit report can also improve your score quickly, especially if you report the errors to the credit bureau online. You can get your credit report free from each of the three credit bureaus once every 12 months at AnnualCreditReport.com.

And don’t forget the best way to maintain a good credit score: Pay your bills on time.

Source: Washington Post

In this part we will explore how different countries utilize credit scoring. We will start our analysis with a general description of credit scoring and then we will deal with different country practices starting with United States.

According to an article quoted to Wikipedia, credit score is a numerical expression based on a statistical analysis of a person’s credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of that person. A credit score is primarily based on credit report information typically sourced from credit bureaus.

US Practice
In US, credit scoring is, a number based on a statistical analysis of a person’s past credit history. In theory credit scoring represents the creditworthiness of that person or entity. In other words it is the likelihood that people will pay their bills. Credit scoring is mainly based on some sort of a credit report. That report comes from one of the three major credit bureaus particularly: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. Contrary to common sense, income is not considered by the major credit bureaus when calculating a credit score.

We can talk about different methods of calculating credit scores. The most common of all is FICO, the most widely known type of credit score. It is a credit score developed by FICO, previously known as Fair Isaac Corporation.

Today, this method is used by several mortgage lenders who use a risk-based system to determine the possibility that the borrower may default on financial obligations to the mortgage lender. These bureaus of creditors all have their own credit scoring mechanisms and these are: Equifax’s Experian’s PLUS score, ScorePower, and TransUnion’s credit score. Moreover, each one of them also sells the VantageScore credit score. In addition to that, many of the large lenders, including the major credit card issuers, have developed their own proprietary scoring models. This helps them follow and suit a model which suits their interests most.