ABA Family Legal Guide

Consumer Credit

Applying for Credit

The Credit Score

How do creditors decide whether to issue you credit?

Many employ scoring systems that weigh different factors deemed relevant to your creditworthiness. A credit scoring system attempts to determine how likely it is that a consumer will pay her or his debts.

The company Fair, Isaac developed a scoring system called the FICO score. But not all credit-scoring systems are alike. They attach different weights to different factors. For this reason, a consumer may have varying credit scores with the credit bureaus. The following factors are generally relevant: