It's a perfect Catch-22: If your credit history is insufficient to get a FICO credit score, it's hard to qualify for a loan or a credit card. That's because many lenders use FICO scores to decide whether to offer you credit and to determine your interest rate. But if a bank won't give you a loan, how can you build a credit history and compile a score?
Fair Isaac, the firm that created the FICO score, has developed the new FICO Expansion score to measure the creditworthiness of people who have little or no information on file with the three major credit bureaus. The new score, like the traditional FICO score, runs from 300 to 850. A score in the 700s indicates that you are a good credit risk.
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