First American Corp. has added a credit scoring system to its suite of services designed to give borrowers with non-traditional credit histories a home-buying boost.

The move adds to a small but growing number of credit reporting services designed to make more loans available, more quickly, to borrowers with thin or nonexistent credit histories.

The estimated 50 million borrowers are often first-time home buyers, older home buyers, low- and moderate-income households, immigrants, ethnic minorities who struggle to reveal their creditworthiness.

As part of Santa Ana, CA-based First American's "Anthem" (Assisting Non-traditional Homebuyers in Emerging Markets) Suite of services, the Anthem Score ranges from 375 to 850, but unlike traditional credit, scoring is not an existing score that comes with conventional credit reports, but is created on demand by First American.

"It is manually compiled and created on demand, but what used to take a week now takes 48 hours. The score is the icing on the cake, a distillation of data," said Mark F. Catone, a senior vice president with First American.

A credit score is a numerical analysis of a consumers' creditworthiness generated, in part, from information on a credit report. A credit report tracks credit consumers' payment records on individual credit accounts and reveals how well, or how poorly, each account is being paid. The reports also document credit requests and notices of liens, judgments, and other "derogatory" remarks as well as remarks from the consumer, consumers' identifying information and other data.

In the past, three credit reporting agencies -- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion -- have, by and large, been the keepers of traditional credit reports and scores.

However, borrowers who don't use traditional credit -- credit cards, installment loans, auto loans, and the like, don't show up on their radar. When they apply for a home mortgage, they are either denied credit because of a lack of traditional credit or must jump through a circus of hoops to prove their creditworthiness.

As a result, First American and others, including Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac (recently relocated from San Rafael, CA), known for its traditional FICO credit scoring system widely used in the mortgage lending business, have jumped into the non-traditional credit reporting market.

"It's an easier way of looking at data. There is a demographic shift, an influx of consumers with little or no credit, and as that population is growing, this product really fits because it uses information that isn't part of the (traditional) credit files depository," said Catone.

First American's Anthem Score is generated from credit information in the company's existing Anthem Report, a non-traditional credit report compiled from any available traditional credit bureau data and supplemented with alternative credit sources including rent payments, pay day loans, rent-to-own purchases, utility bill payments, insurance premium payments and other forms of non-traditional credit. First American works with borrowers to gather the data for the report and ultimately the score.

The Anthem Suite, also includes Rapid Recheck, a service that expedites credit file corrections, and a free Consumer Assistance and Disputes service of specialists who explain to consumers, credit issues and credit improvement strategies and help resolve discrepancies with the national credit bureaus.

MassHousing, a Massachusetts public authority that provides affordable mortgage loans to low- and moderate-income home buyers, as a sort of state-level Fannie Mae, is the first lender to use the Anthem Score system.

Fair Isaac's FICO "Expansion" credit risk score is likewise designed specifically to help lenders extend credit to consumers in what is considered a largely "under served" market of "cash-basis" borrowers.

Published: April 26, 2005

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.