Access to credit is a key constraint for entrepreneurs. And limited credit is in part caused by the difficulty of predicting which small businesses will and won’t succeed. Since the crisis, banks have reconsidered their overreliance on personal credit scores in small business lending. MORE

This bias shows up in numerous aspects of our lives, including algorithms used for electronic discovery, teacher evaluations, car insurance, credit score rankings, and university admissions. This way, no single metric, such as SAT score, would exclude a qualified candidate. More and more, human resources managers rely on data-driven algorithms to help with hiring decisions and to navigate a vast pool of potential job candidates. MORE

and Barclays, scored a 740 on the GMAT, and climbed Mount Everest. BONUS BITS First Impressions The Science of Meeting People (Wired) Should Your Credit Score Matter on Job Interviews? A Bunch of Seemingly Smart People Look Who Harvard and Stanford B-Schools Just Rejected Fortune It''s not especially surprising that there''s steep competition to get into these two top business schools. MORE

Credit card companies could be doing a much better job of saving us from ourselves. It’s well known that very few consumers are familiar with the terms of their credit card agreements and that even fewer are aware of those terms’ implications. MORE

Prototypically, a bank officer would make credit decisions for applicants based on the applicants' "character" — which church they attended, which school their kids were in, etc. The standardized score massively increased credit availability and thus lowered the cost of borrowing. MORE

However, if your company can build business credit, you will find yourself gaining more opportunities to access cash. Whatever you do, don’t operate your business on your personal credit. Not only does it make your personal finances vulnerable, but business credit is a much more powerful tool professionally than personal credit. Make the financially fit decision Use these 5 quick tips to start building business credit today. MORE

Recent analysis by Bain and SAP found that only 7% of bank credit products could be handled digitally from end to end. Approval times are cut to days or, in some cases, a few minutes, fueled by data-driven algorithms that quickly pre-qualify borrowers based on a handful of data points such as personal credit scores, Demand Deposit Account (DDA) data, tax returns, and three months of bank statements. MORE

In short, the health of American small businesses depends significantly on credit. And as we describe in a recent HBS Working Paper , gaps remain in traditional bank credit supply. Neither sales nor employment have fully recovered, and credit seems harder to come by. MORE

The idea is that direct driving behavior over time will be more predictive than traditional proxies such as age, credit rating, or geography. For insurers, transforming these data into their most usable form may require the creation of new composite variables or scores from the existing data — something like a driving risk score that gives weight to telematics data, geography, and credit score. MORE

Ensure your credit score remains high to garner the best interest rate deal. MORE

After the recession, for instance, one large lender made a practice of looking for “rehab” customers whose credit suffered in the downturn but who had since managed to achieve more stable incomes. MORE

The company’s original focus was personal lending – individuals borrowing a few thousand dollars here and there to pay off credit card bills or fund a home improvement project. MORE

For example, developing a credit scoring model using data of past defaults and then testing the model on that same data is an exercise in circularity: you’re predicting what you’ve explained already. Predictive analytics often sounds a bit like quantum mechanics: fiendishly complex to look at and wildly counter-intuitive. So when someone sells you a tool, how can you verify that the black box is fit for its purpose or even lives up to the vendor’s claims? MORE

Women On Business Sponsors credit credit scoreWe've Moved! Update your Reader Now. This feed has moved to: [link] If you haven't already done so, update your reader now with this changed subscription address to get your latest updates from us. link]. MORE

Your life account gets credited when you include others positively and debited when you smash them. When you smash others, it does not just damage the people or the things you crush on, it damages your credit score as well. Does a good credit score matter to you? The post Smashing Others and Credit Score appeared first on Self Help Zen. In fictions, often the lead character kicks down the ladder. He smashes others that come his way. MORE

The consumer financial institution we work with also hires our fellows for their credit department that assesses underwriting risks. Instead, a strong statistics background can ensure the credit models withstand rigorous statistical scrutiny and do not overfit the data. MORE

People with higher credit scores tend to be less impulsive, better at delaying rewards, and more trustworthy than those with lower scores, according to a study of 63 university students and employees by Shweta Arya, Catherine Eckel, and Colin Wichman of the University of Texas at Dallas; the study included a survey and a set of tasks and games. Fair Isaac credit scores are calculated on a scale from 300 to 850 , with the U.S. MORE

It created all this anxiety among users, but they didn’t know how to influence the score, what behaviors were being measured. We all want to get that perfect score, and yet what’s the point of having a five-point scale if it’s “5 is great, anything less is bad”? MORE

Some innovative companies are connecting data traditionally used by banks to assess the credit score of loan applicants with information ranging from mobile phone usage data to online social media relations data, in order to better and faster assess the creditworthiness of a micro-loan applicant. MORE

Educational records, business histories, health care information, and credit ratings could all be made usable the world over, helping those who want to trade or travel to prove their credentials. Anybody who has ever paid too much for a college transcript or tried to clear a shadow on their credit score can see how systems like this would be helpful in our daily lives. MORE