Who is credited with founding credit scoring?

• A. Bill Fair and Earl Isaac
• B. FICO
• C. John H. Smith
• D. William Fair

Answer: (A)

Credit scoring as a formal, quantitative method was pioneered by Bill Fair and Earl Isaac when they founded Fair, Isaac and Company. They developed the first statistical model that could predict a borrower’s likelihood of repayment by turning a person’s credit history and related data into a single numeric score. This stopped underwriting from being purely subjective and gave lenders a simple, consistent way to compare applicants and price risk.

The score they created eventually became known through the company named after them, FICO, which popularized and widely distributed the scoring system. So while the brand most people recognize is FICO, the credit-scoring concept itself is credited to Fair and Isaac. Choices that name a generic person or a different company don’t capture who actually originated the method.