Banks have great reasons to want to know all they can about their potential customers, especially when it comes to mortgages and other large credits. They have developed some pretty impressive analytical techniques that recall the tools companies use in evaluating job candidates these days. It's all about behavioral science.

To assess whether an applicant will be a good credit, banks look at a lot of measures and make judgments based on your rent and utility payments, your income, your home's value and rate of change and your banking habits. The old-fashioned credit score is almost passé.

Fair Isaac indeed has extended its product line. It now markets bank-depositor behavior scores, which are used by banks to assess customers, based on balances, deposit records and withdrawal activity.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on all this recently and headlined it "New Ways Bankers Are Spying on You." That gets at one of the pitfalls of this more scientific approach: it could easily be misunderstood. It sounds a little big brother-ish, but to be sure, it's not like genetic testing of job applicants. Still, there are some PR drawbacks here.

For more:
- here's the article

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