FICO

Imagine making the commitment to hire a personal trainer to help you improve your health. Only to show up on day 1 at the gym and find out your trainer is 100 pounds overweight, eats a steady diet of processed foods, drinks alcohol in excess all week, and smokes 2 packs a day. Kinda hurts their credibility, right?

The Fair Isaac Corporation is the company which develops and manages the FICO credit score for people. And having a good credit score can mean the difference between being approved for a loan, or denied. So I find it interesting that the Fair Isaac Corporation’s corporate debt is rated by both Moody’s and S&P as non-investment grade (a nice way of saying “junk bonds”). So the company which slaps a FICO score on people manages its own balance sheet in such a way that its corporate bonds are rated as junk bonds. The irony is thick.

Nonetheless, we field client inquiries almost weekly with some version of this question: “Do you have a list of tips for my grandson which will help him improve his credit score?” FICO itself offers a list of action steps at this link here.

Source: Moody’s and Standard & Poors

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