Fair Isaac Corp., the company that devised the ubiquitous FICO credit scores, announced this week that it plans to roll out a suite of tools designed to predict future default risk.

Fair Isaac says the new products will predict how lenders can offer even more debt to consumers without taking on undue risk.

The update revamps the old credit-scoring formula so that it penalizes consumers with a high debt load more than the earlier version. FICO 08 should increase predictive strength by 5 to 15 percent, according to Fair Isaac’s vice president of scoring, Tom Quinn.

FICO 08 is also expected to do a better job of determining which consumers with past defaults are “more on the road to recovery and should have more of a higher score,” Quinn says.

The new index can look at three consumers with a 700 FICO score and determine which of the three could take on additional debt without defaulting, according to the company.

Source: Star-Tribune, Kara McGuire (01/22/08)