FICO Scoring and GENDER...

[Anonymous]

I'm curious, does anyone know if gender is a factor when determining FICO scores? Since with so-called 'traditional' gender roles... men were normally thought of as the 'breadwinners' or 'heads of households', etc... I'm wondering if gender is considered an indicator of credit-worthiness? (even if only indirectly...)

In other words, hypothetically... if a man and a woman had ITENTICAL credit reports: identical credit history length, identical accounts and balances, and identical payment histories... and even identical jobs... (I know this would be practically impossible... but just supposing it happened)... would the man have a higher FICO score than the woman? Even if it were just a slight difference?

I understand that FICO is proprietary... and I know they say that gender isn't a factor... (right) ...but has anyone else ever wondered about this? Any ideas? Any thoughts?

Thanks! (and Happy Independence Day!)

[haulingthescoreup]

Nope. The testified before Congress a decade or so ago, and said that gender, race, etc are not factored in. They used to use occupation, but they dropped that a long time ago.

Since equal credit opportunity laws prohibit this, I doubt that the FICO big-wigs would want to go to jail by doing this.

BTW, women are heavily represented in our collection of FICO Forums high scorers. Not me yet, alas. Working on it, though.

[RobertEG]

Since age, sex, marital status, race, religion, and national origin are all specifically prohibited under section 1691 of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act as being criteria upon which credit decisions can be based, FICO does not maintain such data, and thus does not include it as part of FICO scoring.

[Anonymous]

Of course gender isn't a factor in FICO scoring. That isn't to say there may be lenders out there (I'm talking individual underwriters, not necessarily companies as a whole) who may have gender bias issues. But in FICO scoring - not so much.

As to your theoretical scenario with a man & woman who have identical credit - my DH and I probably come as close as anyone can to identical. Almost all our accounts are joint except for a few small CCs here & there that have 0 balances. We've been getting joint credit for 17+ years, so our CRs look almost identical. We even have similar work histories (not that it matters for scoring purposes). My scores across the board are higher. Not by much - maybe 10 points or so - but higher.

[Anonymous]

Interesting... thanks for the replies!

[RobertEG]

If you can prove gender bias in any lendor's decision, you have a legal course of action.

[Junejer]

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@RobertEG wrote:

If you can prove gender bias in any lendor's decision, you have a legal course of action.

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It happens, as well as race. It's just very difficult to prove. Usually shows up in more subtle areas like CRA neglect and such.

[Anonymous]

I suppose it doesn't help that the FICO algorithm is super-secret/proprietary either... besides that, credit reports seem to be quite a bit like fingerprints that change. No two are exactly alike from one day to the next.

Seems like any form of discrimination would be impossible to prove; that said, it would also make it that much easier for them to get away with it, if they wanted to.

Interesting....

[Lucid08]

I cant offer any definitive proof about the gender issue, but I -do- remember an instance back in the early 1980's when myself and a friend both app'd at Sears and JCPenny's on the same day at the same time. Both of us were military and in the same paygrade, we were the same age with -zero- credit history period. He got approved for both cards and I was declined. The only difference between the two of us- He was 6 months married and used his wife(who had no job nor any credit history) as co-applicant. Go figure.

[marty56]

I'm just waiting for someone here to post that they changed gender and their FICO score went down as a result. 

What would happen if you had a first name that could be a man or a woman.

I would argue that if their is discrimination going on with FICO, it is based on IQ.  How I managed my usage and payments not about what race or gender I am.