What is FICO

The various credit bureaus can use different methods at arriving at your score and this is why you can sometimes have more luck getting credit from one lending institution than another.

The industry standard is a system called FICO.
FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corporation Company.
FICO is software for calculating credit score and is regarded as the leader in the calculation of credit score within the finance industry.

The fact that it is commonly accepted as the most suitable way to rate a person's credit score is why many people will talk of FICO scores or FICO ratings rather than calling them credit scores.
The software that is used to calculate credit score, whether it is FICO or other software uses research and mathematics to decide upon the rating.

This information is important to you as it will help you to have a better understanding of what you can do to give your credit score a boost in its rating.

The best way to explain how credit score is calculated is to compare it to insurance premiums where you will pay a higher premium based on various factors in your life.
With insurance those factors will be your age, your occupation, your health and even your choice of sport where dangerous activities will make you a higher risk for the insurance company.

The insurance company can then look at their research data and calculate your risk.
Obviously older people and those participating in dangerous activities will be a higher risk and those people will be expected to pay higher premiums.

Credit bureaus have similar research data that relates to peoples ability to repay debt in certain circumstances, and it is this data that they will use when they input your information to decide whether they will lend you money and if so at what interest rates.