National and state average FICO credit scores
Fair Isaac publishes elusive statstics wth little definition on the homepage of its consumer website
. | By Greg Fisher, creditscoring.com
Myth: Employers use credit scores
Fair Isaac Corporation (aka FICO), the company whose famous number is key in the lingua franca of financial services, recently released fundamental average credit score statistics. The company states that the US average FICO score is 692. The highest state average FICO score is North Dakota with 720, followed by Minnesota with 718, and Vermont with 716.
There appears to be some correlation between credit scores and climates.
The new numbers are right on the homepage of the consumer website myFICO, satisfying a public craving for the simple benchmark. Oddly (unless you understand the petty gamesmanship of the credit score industry) such a number went underground for a few years. The last mention of "average" on the FICO Banking Analytics Blog was on March 19, and it had nothing to do with the recent release of the national an state averages.
Prior to that, in 2010, FICO told creditscoring.com that it's analysts knew the "national median score and the national average score" but were restricted in their disclosure. Also in 2010, in response to another inquiry by creditscoring.com, FICO removed distribution illustrations from its literature.
New agency
A month ago, Parsippany firm Coyne Public Relations announced that it had been named agency of record for myFICO.
In a press release titled with a worn-out cliché, CEO Tom Coyne said, "We look forward to building and executing a creative program that exceeds their expectations in every aspect, especially increasing awareness of myFICO.com as the definitive source to help consumers manage their credit health.â€
Key word: definitve. In a scoring system that ranks you against all other consumers, nothing defines where you stand better than the average.