Case Study: Leading US Bankcard Issuer achieves $12M incremental profit with FICO's FICO® 8 Score

Top US Bankcard Issuer Nurtures Best Customers to Grow Business

A leading U.S. bankcard issuer needed to better identify and reward its best customers—particularly balance-builders in a prime card portfolio—without increasing credit risk amid regulatory (CARD Act) and economic pressures. The challenge was to determine whether adopting the new FICO® 8 Score would improve customer classification for positive account-management actions while keeping loss rates stable.

Working with FICO, the issuer analyzed ~500,000 accounts using a 700 score cutoff and compared “swap” customers who moved above or below the cutoff between score versions. FICO 8 improved separation of good and bad accounts, yielding a 26% reduction in unit bad rate, a 33% reduction in dollar bad rate, about $787,000 incremental profit on the examined accounts ($44 per swap account, $1.66 per account overall), and a projected uplift in excess of $12 million when applied across the full portfolio.