Credit Card Magazine

A credit score is a numerical expression based on a statistical analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of that person. A credit score is primarily based on credit report information, typically sourced from credit bureaus.

Lenders, such as banks and credit card companies, use credit scores to evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to consumers and to mitigate losses due to bad debt. Lenders use credit scores to determine who qualifies for a loan, at what interest rate, and what credit limits. Lenders also use credit scores to determine which customers are likely to bring in the most revenue. The use of credit or identity scoring prior to authorizing access or granting credit is an implementation of a trusted system.

Credit scoring is not limited to banks. Other organizations, such as mobile phone companies, insurance companies, employers, landlords, and government departments employ the same techniques. Credit scoring also has a lot of overlap with data mining, which uses many similar techniques.

Score Interpretation
One first has to determine exactly what type of score one is referring to. There are numerous scores sold in the marketplace. FICO produces scores used by TransUnion and Equifax and has been a score developer the longest. Experian has abandoned this scoring model and relies on their less-popular "PLUS" system. The 3 companies also use VantageScore, a competing score technology to FICO. Finally, there are other scoring systems such as TransUnion's "TransRisk" or Experian's "ScoreX". These are educational scores in that while not used by lenders for underwriting loans, they do provide insight into how scores are calculated.