Are you aware that the company that developed and markets the FICO score has little to no rules as to how it does so? There’s no oversight into the algorithm that it uses to create your credit score. There’s no regulation that delineates what factors they should take into account or how heavily they should weight them.
So what, you say? Think about this for a second. Your credit score determines whether you get a credit card or not. Whether you get a mortgage or not. Whether you get a car or not. Some businesses are even using the credit score to help determine the worthiness of a potential employee. Despite all that influence in your life, there’s nothing to keep them from deciding that the one late payment you had a year ago is enough to drop you several hundred points. Sure, that’s not the way it works right now, but there is nothing to keep them from doing so.
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need credit. You could pay for everything in cash and not worry about it. But, this world is far from perfect. Very few people don’t use credit in some way, shape, or form. And each of those people could just as easily be effected by any change in the FICO algorithm. Almost every other financially related type of company has some regulation. Banks, Credit Unions, Credit Card companies, Payday lenders, and even the stock market have lots of regulation and oversight. But not the company that determines how much a person can use those organizations and whose product is solely responsible for determining how much they can use them or at what rate. Shouldn’t they have some regulation or oversight?
It’s clear what I think on this. (yes) What do you all think? Should FICO have some regulation and oversight?
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I too find it rather unnerving that these credit agencies are using proprietary algorithms without oversight to calculate my credit score, which has such a profound impact on many areas of my life. I’m not sure about the chances of anything actually ever being done about it, however. For some reason nobody seems to be very interested in speaking up about it (yourself excepted), and most people don’t seem that worried.
It’s a shame, and certainly something worth noting.
Hmmm I am not sure where I fall on this one. I generally hate government regulation.
However, considering that the federal government regulates the amount of commercials per show (FCC) and State Speed Limits (through the use of highway grants) it would seem logical that they would at least have oversight into something so important in today’s society.