New market for FICO

Article Excerpt

FAIR ISAAC $122.79 (New York symbol FICO; TSINetwork Rating: Average) (415-472-2211; www.fairisaac.com; Shares outstanding: 30.9 million; Market cap: $3.8 billion; Dividend yield: 0.1%) is best known for its FICO Scores software, which lets lenders make better decisions about customer creditworthiness. It also makes programs that help credit card issuers reduce fraud and analyze the spending patterns of cardholders. The company has recently applied its expertise to other businesses, especially cybersecurity. Fair Isaac has now announced a partnership with Singaporebased Lenddo, a specialist in credit and verification technologies. Together, the two firms plan to develop a credit risk score for consumers in India with limited or no formal credit history. The collaboration will combine Lenddo’s expertise in online verification with FICO’s credit scores. The new scoring system will improve how lenders assess risk for borrowers with “thin-files”; that’s a term for people who don’t have enough data in their credit reports for traditional scoring. Those consumers represent a big, untapped market in India and elsewhere…