By: Kari Michel
Lending institutions are more challenged today than ever before when assessing credit risk to find creditworthy consumers. Since 2006, the start of the housing bust and recession, consumer’s overall creditworthiness has deteriorated, especially those consumers who once had a high score (low risk). “For example, a study earlier this year by VantageScore found that the probability of serious delinquency, defined as nonpayment for 90 days or more, had increased by 417 percent among “super prime” borrowers between June 2007 and June 2009. Default risk during the same period rose by 406 percent for the second-highest rated category of “prime” consumers, and nearly doubled for those at the “near prime” scoring level.”*
VantageScore is one example of a credit risk model that was recently redeveloped to capture the changing consumer behavior of repayment. The development data set included 45 million consumer credit profiles for the time period of 2006 to 2009. VantageScore 2.0 will be released for lenders use January 2011.
*Source: The Washington Post, “Walk-aways leading to big changes for all borrower’s credit score, November 5, 2010 Link for article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/05/AR2010110502133.html
