FICO Scores

Lenders use the FICO score to determine if a consumer should be accepted for a line of credit. To improve your credit scores, you need to understand where the scores come from. The more you know about what affects your score, the better chance you have of limiting harmful credit behavior. Knowledge is power.

FICO History

Fair Isaac Corporation was founded in 1956 by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac. It was in the 1950s they created the FICO model which was adopted by credit card companies in the late 1980s. With the push from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 1990s, lenders started using the FICO model on a regular basis for their approval process. Because the FICO model worked so well for lenders, it is almost always used today for loan approval decisions.