As you may all be aware, FICO is rolling out a new program for calculating our credit scores this year. It’s supposed to make things a little less confusing for consumers and even out the model a little more so you don’t have massive changes in score for something small. They don’t have all the details worked out yet, so it’s still going to be several weeks before they’re ready to roll out the new model. But, I do know a little something that’s coming our way.

The new scoring model will bring back authorized-user accounts. Not very exciting news, but it’s the best I’ve got on the new model.

If you’ve followed the changes FICO has made, you’ll know they took authorized-user accounts out of the mix last summer. A large reason for this was the abuse that was going on, something termed “piggybacking.” Essentially, a person with bad credit would go to a credit counseling agency to get their credit on track so they could qualify for a loan. The credit counseling agency would pay someone with good credit to add the one with bad credit to one of their accounts as an authorized user. In some cases, this increased a person’s credit score dramatically, putting them in line to get a loan they normally wouldn’t have qualified for.

So, in light of the unethical way people were taking advantage of the privilege, FICO took it away. Unfortunately, this hindered spouses and children who were trying to establish or re-establish their credit because there was no way to determine whether they were legitimate authorized-users or not, at least that’s what FICO was saying then.

It turns out, they’ve figured out a way to circumvent that problem. They haven’t given too much away about it, though because they’re still playing their cards close to their chests. Still, it’s an update and I thought I’d share!

What do you think? Does it matter to you whether they include this in the scores, or not? What changes are you looking forward too most?

Related posts:

1. The New Face of FICO
2. Why raise your Fico score?
3. How Your FICO Score Impacts Your Life
4. Shedding Debt vs. the Credit Score
5. Your FICO Score – Understanding “Adverse Public Records”