Combining Job Security Score with FICO gives the most predictive credit scoring system

Picture this. You are in line to be an outstanding loan officer. You have been repeatedly recognized for your stellar performance. Then it happens. Remember that loan you felt so enthusiastic about approving, the one where the guy had good income, low debt, and a great credit score. Fast forward twelve months …and that loan is in default. But how? You took every precaution in deciding whether to lend money to the potential borrower, only to find it in default a short time later. Now, all you can do is try to figure out why that particular loan is in default and what you could possibly have done differently.

How much money did your company write off as bad loans last year? What is your company’s projected loan loss for 2008? Whatever the number is, it can always be smaller. The good news is, it’s not too late to reduce that number! Here’s how. There is now a new tool, the Scorelogix’s Job Security Score, which accurately predicts a borrower’s ability to repay debt. You are no longer limited to making lending decisions using only a borrower’s FICO or credit score. Now, you can improve your existing lending process by layering Job Security Score on top of FICO or credit scores, reduce your credit losses, and increase approvals.

Job Security Score, or JSS, is an alternative to the traditional credit score. It is unique in that it predicts consumer credit risk due to income loss not captured by FICO or credit bureau score and therefore is a powerful tool in minimizing credit losses. This is revolutionary because historically, the credit score only takes one’s past repayment patterns into account. It fails to acknowledge current economic conditions that could affect one’s ability to continue to repay a debt in the future. The Job Security Score offers a comprehensive snapshot of one’s ability to repay debt in the future by examining vast amounts of economic data and an applicant’s information, such as location, income, and job type.

Job loss is the primary reason for credit defaults. When unemployment occurs, it causes financial stress, and many are unable to make their credit card, auto loan, or mortgage payments. Use Job Security Score to identify high risk customers early to protect your company’s assets and ultimately, improve the overall quality of your lending decisions.

The recent credit crisis and mortgage meltdown offers evidence that FICO and credit scores are inadequate when used alone. It has become increasingly apparent that the industry truly needs a better risk scoring tool that is forward-looking, and one that predicts consumer credit risk by factoring in the changing economy’s impact on a borrower’s future payment capacity. Scorelogix’s Job Security Score is that tool which offers increased loss protection by helping you minimize losses and sustain profits. How much money did your company write off as bad loans last year? Can your company really afford to miss this opportunity to reduce and manage losses better?

Scorelogix®, the leader in consumer income risk scoring for banks and lenders, and the creator of the acclaimed Job Security Index and the Local Economic Health Index, has rolled out its next generation personal Job Security Score ™ to help individuals make better career and financial plans.

Scorelogix, a Delaware based risk analytics company, has launched its next generation Job Security Score in response to a growing need among individuals to know how secure their job is. Job Security Score, or JSS, predicts an individual’s job and income loss risk using a patent-pending statistical model that uses personal data and economic factors which impact a person’s job prospects.

The company is making the personal JSS available to users through partnerships with leading online job sites and online editions of newspapers. By making personal JSS available through the internet, Scorelogix intends to bring the power of its award-winning, unique, and patent pending computer model into the hands of every individual in the American workforce.

The personal JSS gives the individual the exact same high level of accuracy that was previously only available to banks and lenders. The score tells an individual how likely they are to have their job available to them over the next twelve months, and it also computes their ranking relative to the rest of the US workforce. The company also makes a fifteen page, premium service Job Security Report available to users. The report is designed to provide detailed, but easy to understand, insights into why a score is high or low and allows individuals to begin a specific financial action plan based on their individual outcomes.

“The average person in the US workforce is now only a click away from knowing how secure his or her job really is”, according to David Watral, Ph.D., Director of Business Development at Scorelogix . “For most of us, financial security depends on job security. In these uncertain times, people need this kind of information” says Dr. Watral.

The company noted that the JSS does not predict whether an individual will lose their job due to personal incompetence or other factors, which only account for a small percentage of all job losses. The biggest driver of job losses is the economy. A slow-down or recession impacts different people in the workforce in different ways and some jobs at a higher risk than others.

Scorelogix’s Job Security Score captures the disparate impact economy has on jobs and their security prospects, and it predicts which jobs are the most vulnerable over the course of a twelve month period and which are more secure. This kind of prediction is based upon hundreds of variables tracked by Scorelogix which change the job market on a day to day basis. By using a sophisticated risk model and focusing on factors which have the biggest impact on jobs, the Scorelogix JSS is able to make job security predictions that are 85% accurate.

Scorelogix® Job Security Index™ ― a measure of US workers’ job security and unemployment risk, decreased by 0.8 percent in March, marking the fourth month in a row that job security has fallen. The decline in job security in March also marks the sixth time in thirteen months that job security has fallen. Such a decline suggests that American jobs have become less secure in the past month.

More than eighty percent of all Occupational categories tracked by Scorelogix® recorded negative growth. Job Security Index™ fell most significantly for jobs related to Farming, Fishing and Forestry along with Construction and Extraction continuing the downward trend from January 2008.

The spread between the states with the highest and the lowest job security rose from 94.3 in February to 95.2 in March. Hawaii and Michigan are the states with the highest and lowest levels of job security, respectively as was the case in February 2008.

Every month, Scorelogix – a Delaware based, investor-backed payment risk analytics company, produces the Job Security Index, a barometer of the nation’s job security outlook based on workers’ unemployment risk, by analyzing thousands of Job Security Scores for individuals across the nation. The Job Security Score is a patent-pending consumer risk score from Scorelogix and it predicts job-loss and income-loss risk for individuals. The Job Security Index represents how national economy, global economic factors, technology, international competition, outsourcing, etc, impact the demand and supply of jobs, layoffs and job security.

Scorelogix® – a pioneer in consumer risk analytics and economic analysis – released its monthly Economic Health Index for November which shows an increase of more than fourteen points. The index measures economic activity, prosperity and opportunities available to individuals in their specific zip codes, cities, counties, states and other regional levels.

The top 3 states with the highest Economic Health Index values are District of Columbia, Maryland and Connecticut, whereas the bottom 3 states with the lowest values are Arkansas, Puerto Rico and Mississippi.

The top 3 counties with the highest Economic Health Index values are Arlington-VA, Montgomery-MD, and Alexandria City-VA, whereas the bottom 3 counties with the lowest index values are Monroe-AR, Chicot-AR, and Clay-AR. Each of the bottom 10 counties in terms of LEHI are in Arkansas.

Every month, Scorelogix® produces the Scorelogix Local Economic Health Index, a snapshot of the nation’s economic activity and health. Scorelogix® Local Economic Health Index is a new, comprehensive index that measures economic activity, prosperity and opportunities available to individuals in their specific zip codes, cities, counties, states and other regional levels.

Launched in May 2007 and published monthly, Scorelogix’s Local Economic Health Index has been developed by examining and modeling decades of economic data, consumer data, employment and unemployment data, direct and indirect economic indicators, complex economic cycles, latest economic trends and business activities that impact a location’s economic health.

Scorelogix’s patent-pending Job Security Score provides new consumer credit risk insights by predicting individuals’ job-loss and income-loss risk and therefore promises to reduce losses for financial institutions

Financial institutions incur credit losses partly because of their inability to predict borrowers’ unemployment risk. Scorelogix’s patent-pending Job Security Score (JSS) promises to lower these losses by predicting borrowers’ unemployment risk and their ‘ability-to-pay’ risk, which has been the missing component of consumer credit risk until now.

JSS is similar to a credit bureau score but unlike the credit score which predicts ‘willingness-to-pay’ based on credit history, JSS predicts the ‘ability-to-pay’ based on future income risk. JSS predicts this ‘ability-to-pay’ risk by finding patterns and relationships between the economy, business conditions, and individual demographic and employment indicators to predict an individual’s unemployment risk.

Since job loss is a key driver of consumer bankruptcies and delinquencies, JSS has significant applications as a consumer credit risk predictor, both as a complementary credit score and as a primary credit score when conventional credit scores are not available or are unreliable.

JSS allows lenders to have the most accurate consumer risk assessment model in place. JSS, when combined with credit bureau scores, improves predictive power by redistributing the population such that lenders can further identify good and bad accounts, increases approvals without increasing loss risk, and identifies a larger number of delinquent accounts earlier.

JSS differentiates itself as a leading indicator of credit risk, unlike credit bureau scores which are lagging indicators, and offers new credit risk separation opportunities leading to superior acquisition, pricing, and delinquency and loss management capabilities. Test results have proved that JSS is over 85% accurate in predicting unemployment risk up to twelve months in advance.

JSS is ECOA compliant, does not require consumer’s SSN or any personally identifiable data, is available for the entire 215 million adult U.S. population, and is updated monthly, reflecting the latest economic conditions that impact jobs and income.

Founded in 2003, Scorelogix is a pioneer in consumer income and payment risk analytics. In 2007, Scorelogix was selected as one of the top 4 upcoming companies by Business Alliance and as one of the top 3 entrepreneurial firms by Belmont Partners. To learn more about Scorelogix or its cutting edge risk forecasting products visit www.scorelogix.com.

Scorelogix was named as one of the top 3 entrepreneurs by the Belmont Partners, a national consulting firm specializing in reverse mergers, at the Alternative Public Strategies Conference, Washington DC held on June 27, 2006. The conference was hosted by Belmont Partners and it offered a forum for the comprehensive evaluation of principal investment opportunities and provides direct access to a large number of qualified investors. The event drew investors, bankers, attorneys, corporate professionals, issuers, potential issuers and entrepreneurs interested in exploring alternative financing, public equity, tools for capital formation, and international markets.

Scorelogix was ranked among the top 4 young and upcoming companies by the Business Alliance of George Mason University at an event held on March 21, 2007 in Fairfax, VA. Three times each year, the Business Alliance gives four or five young companies unprecedented access to interested investors to most promising, high-potential companies in the VA, DC, MD, DE, NJ and NY region. Scorelogix was selected through a very meticulous screening process that aims to identify only the best companies as demonstrated by the strength of their business model, management, product and market opportunities.

Scorelogix, LLC has announced the launch of UnemploymentScore.com, a new website dedicated to helping individuals to assess and appreciate their present and future unemployment risk, measure their risk compared to others, and make informed and smarter career and income enhancing choices.

Unemployment is perhaps the most understated and underestimated personal financial risk for individuals today, yet until now there has been no real way of assessing this risk. The Unemployment Score developed by Scorelogix, is a personalized unemployment risk score uniquely computed for individuals based on their unique profile. Individuals can get their own Unemployment Score by visiting UnemploymentScore.com.

AnUnemployment Score is quite similar to a credit score but instead of scoring credit risk it scores unemployment and income risk using statistical models based on an individual’s employment characteristics and history. Factors such as education level, industry, occupation, region of employment and past unemployment history are all taken into account when UnemploymentScore.com delivers a personalized score to an individual. Unemployment Score can be a valuable tool for individuals who want to measure their unemployment risk and use it to make more informed decisions to enhance their career and income opportunities, evaluate career and income growth options, make smarter financial plans, prepare better for a possible unemployment situation, and to maximize their career and income potential.

A new unemployment risk assessment technology uses employment and unemployment data, as well as user data, to score the probability of an individual facing an unemployment situation.

Scorelogix, founded in 2003, has developed a technology that can predict any person’s unemployment risk. The product is called the Unemployment Score and consists of a score between 0-1000 and a detailed 4- page report which includes a summary analysis, relative ranking analysis, key positive & negative risk factors and tips and recommendations on how to manage unemployment risk. The Unemployment Score is based on Scorelogix’s patent-pending and proprietary risk scoring model and uses customer profile data, economic factors, unemployment data, hiring and firing trends and other data to compute customer's probability of loss of job and income.

Unemployment is a serious but highly underestimated personal risk. Tens of millions of jobs are lost every year and in 2003 about 8.8 million people were unemployed at any given time for an average of 5 months. Currently about 8 million people are unemployed. The Unemployment Score is a must for everyone because uncertain economic growth, overseas job migration, intense international competition, rapid technological changes, uneven supply and demand trends, higher productivity and volatile business dynamics are making more and more jobs vulnerable to layoffs. Knowing unemployment risk and associated income risk is critical since most of us make financial and career decisions based on the perceived strength of our employment situation, and any improper and inaccurate estimation of our job security can lead to ineffective strategies and serious financial difficulties.

Most unemployed people lost their jobs unexpectedly, even though they were generally aware of the weak employment situation throughout the nation. Using the Unemployment Score, individuals can make better career decisions leading to higher job security. People relying on their feel for the economy and job situation could be dangerously inaccurate. With the Unemployment Score individuals can find their scientifically predicted job risk and gain insights that would help them reduce their job-loss and income-loss risk.

For the employed, the Unemployment Score predicts job loss and income loss risk and offers ways to mitigate job risk. For unemployed individuals the Unemployment Score offers critical analysis into their job loss factors and ways to avoid future job-loss. For job seekers, the Unemployment Score helps find better jobs by allowing them to compare jobs by their unemployment risk. Getting the score is extremely simple, individuals can visit Scorelogix's site at www.scorelogix.com and get their own scores in just a few seconds.