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Fallout: The Financial Crisis

FICO profits likely to be on low end

Ashley Milne-Tyte Nov 5, 2008
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Fallout: The Financial Crisis

FICO profits likely to be on low end

Ashley Milne-Tyte Nov 5, 2008
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TEXT OF STORY

Steve Chiotakis: Let’s take a step away from the election results and look at some other numbers that have consequences. You know those credit scores that are ever so important when it comes to buying a house or car? Well the company behind the so-called FICO scores — Fair Isaac — issues its results later today. Has the environment of tight credit, where people are fretting over their scores, benefited Fair Isaac? Here’s Ashley Milne-Tyte.


Ashley Milne-Tyte: You might think anxious consumers would be checking their credit scores right now. But not ones they have to pay for, like the FICO score.

Michael Nemiroff is an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. He says most of Fair Isaac’s credit score business actually comes from companies. Big financial firms use the FICO data to check their customers’ credit when they want to make a big purchase — a house, a boat, even a washer-dryer.

Michael Nemiroff: So based on what’s been going on with the economy for the last couple of quarters and the fact that most consumers are not exactly going out and buying these big-ticket items in droves, I would expect that the volumes of their scoring business would actually be declining.

And, he says, if there’s less credit scoring going on, that’s likely to mean lower profits for Fair Isaac.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.

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