News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:In Detroit a $6.5M loan fund threw FICO scores out, the r... by rmason on Friday September 01, 2017 @01:45AM (#15146410)
They're reinventing community banking. In small towns the bankers knew you, knew your family and made judgments on character and less on credit score.

Kids were borrowing for 4H animals, buying their first car, planting a field using dad's tools and paying those loans back promptly. All of that has gone away, but is being rediscovered.

Re:In Detroit a $6.5M loan fund threw FICO scores out, the r... by dx034 on Friday September 01, 2017 @02:52AM (#15146666)
Community banking is important but cannot replace how modern banks work. Loan volumes are usually small as you cannot give a loan of several million dollars just because you think the other person is trustworthy. Also, this system works for people who stay in their hometown but can make it hard for newcomers to get credit. If you're new in town and your neighbours don't like you it doesn't mean you should be denied credit.

FICO scores are far from perfect but it's the best system banks could come up with so far. All large banks are in the business to make money. If someone comes with better risk measures that can increase lending and keep risk low, they'd happily adapt it.

The big problem with replacing FICO is that new methods based on machine learning often exhibit some form of racial bias which can cause huge fines by the CFPB. So banks try to avoid any new techniques until they can be certain that the system doesn't bias towards certain groups.