FICO Launches Digital Tool Hub to Help Lenders Accelerate Credit Risk Strategy Innovation and Advance Financial Inclusion

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Key Terms

metropolitan statistical area (msa) technical

An MSA is an officially defined region centered on a city and its nearby towns that are economically linked through commuting, shopping and business activity. Think of it as a city’s economic neighborhood used by statisticians to collect comparable data on population, jobs, housing and income. Investors use MSA data to compare local market strength, spot growth or risk in real estate, retail, labor and regional sales performance.

serious delinquency rates financial

The percentage of loans or credit accounts that are deeply overdue—typically more than about three months past payment due dates or already in default/foreclosure—out of a lender’s total loan balance. Think of it as the share of customers who have fallen far behind on payments; rising rates signal growing credit trouble, higher expected losses and pressure on a lender’s earnings and stock value, while falling rates suggest improving loan quality.

fico® score 10 suite technical

A FICO® Score 10 Suite is a set of updated credit-scoring models that estimate a consumer’s likelihood of repaying loans by using both a traditional credit snapshot and a short “history” of balances and payments, plus newer analytics. For investors, it matters because lenders who adopt these models may change who gets loans, at what interest rate, and how risky a loan portfolio appears—think of replacing a single photo of someone’s finances with a short video that reveals more about their habits.

alternative data financial

Alternative data is information from non‑traditional sources—like satellite photos, online shopping and search trends, credit‑card or foot‑traffic counts, and sensor or app activity—used to gauge a company’s sales, supply chain, or market demand. It matters to investors because it can reveal rising or falling trends sooner than official reports, acting like a private weather radar that helps anticipate outcomes, though it requires careful interpretation to avoid noise or bias.

credit invisible financial

A credit invisible person has little or no presence in the mainstream credit reporting system, meaning there is not enough recorded borrowing or repayment history to produce a standard credit score. Think of it like a driver with no recorded license history: lenders and investors have no track record to judge reliability, which can limit access to loans and create opportunities for alternative lenders or new data-driven credit products that aim to serve and assess this untapped group.

03/11/2026 - 08:00 AM

The FICO Score Credit Insights Lab delivers interactive benchmarking, modeling and financial inclusion tools for lenders built on trusted FICO^® Scores

BOZEMAN, Mont.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- FICO (NYSE:FICO), global analytics software leader, today announced the launch of the FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab, a dynamic digital platform designed to help financial institutions pilot cutting-edge scoring strategies, benchmark portfolio performance, and responsibly expand credit access.

The FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab delivers instant insights with critical benchmarking data and interactive portfolio modeling tools that financial institutions need to accelerate revenue growth, mitigate risk, and expand credit access responsibly. Through the suite of tools, financial institutions can explore FICO’s latest scoring innovations, analyze real-world benchmarking data, and simulate the impact of alternative data strategies on portfolio outcomes. These are the only interactive tools available built on the foundation of FICO^®Scores – the most widely used and trusted credit scores in the U.S. lending ecosystem.

Among the early users of the FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab is STCU, a full-service credit union offering consumer, mortgage and business products and services to more than 300,000 members in Washington, Idaho and Oregon.

“The FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab gives us clear perspective on how our portfolio compares to national trends and helps us maintain a comprehensive view for our credit union’s performance against industry benchmarks,” said Jessica Golladay, senior vice president of credit administration at STCU-Spokane, WA. “Having this trusted data from FICO—the score we use in our portfolios—at our fingertips allows us to make more confident risk decisions in real-time. These insights are instrumental in helping our credit union thrive while expanding responsibly to better serving our members’ financial needs.”

With the FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab, risk and strategy teams can experiment with score layering, cash flow integration, simulate portfolio shifts and evaluate the benefits of upgrading to newer models such as the FICO^® Score 10 Suite. The platform simplifies complex analysis, helping institutions align risk decisions with business objectives while meeting regulatory expectations.

"From banks to fintechs – we built the FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab to support the entire credit ecosystem by providing the ability to gain control of their credit strategies while safely expanding access to credit,” said Julie May, vice president and general manager of B2B Scores at FICO. "This new arsenal of tools will put actionable data at lenders’ fingertips, enabling them to simulate portfolio changes, assess risk trade-offs, and optimize scoring strategies with precision and speed."

The FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab features five core interactive tools designed to provide actionable insights, including:

Average FICO^® Score by State Benchmarking Tool: Enables exploration of regional score trends by state or Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) across different FICO^® Score versions, industries, and time periods
Serious Delinquency Rates by FICO^®Score Band: Provides access to national sample data for portfolio performance assessment and benchmarking analysis
FICO^® Score Distribution Benchmarking Tool: Allows comparison of applicant or portfolio score distributions against large national samples
FICO^® Score 10 Adoption Explorer Tool: Facilitates score comparison metrics and upgrade simulation to the FICO^® Score 10 Suite, including portfolio redistribution modeling
Inclusion Opportunity Explorer: Quantifies the business potential of financial inclusion through alternative data scoring solutions for credit invisible and near-approval applicants

Central to the FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab is FICO's long-standing commitment to advancing credit access through responsible innovation. Advanced analytic tools such as the Inclusion Opportunity Explorer enables lenders to develop strategies for extending credit access to credit-invisible and underserved populations. Lenders can model the integration of alternative and cash flow data solutions, including FICO^® Score XD and UltraFICO^® Score, to responsibly reach new-to-credit borrowers while maintaining robust portfolio quality and supporting sustainable growth.

FICO invites lenders to turn insight into impact. By registering at https://www.fico.com/en/ficoscorecreditinsightslab, credit risk professionals can begin using the tools on the FICO^® Score Credit Insights Lab to accelerate business objectives.

About FICO

FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 100 countries do everything from protecting 4 billion payment cards from fraud, to improving financial inclusion, to increasing supply chain resiliency. The FICO® Score, used by 90% of top US lenders, is the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the US and has been made available in over 40 other countries, improving risk management, credit access and transparency.

Learn more at https://www.fico.com

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