“Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) already dominates the market for software used by businesses around the world to make better decisions on customer creditworthiness with its FICO Scores product. Now the company is profiting from the rising use of credit cards around the world, especially in emerging markets. For example, there are now over 200 million credit cards in use in China, and that could rise to over 900 million by 2020. “FICO’s software is already used by 17 of the top 20 credit-card issuers worldwide, and manages 65% of the world’s billion credit cards. Fair Isaac continues to win new clients for its FICO Triad Customer Manager software. Triad can increase a card issuer’s revenue by up to 30%, cut delinquencies by 25% and increase interest income by 25%. Beijing-based China Everbright Bank, one of China’s top 10 banks, will now use FICO Triad Customer Manager for its credit-card operations. That will help the bank sell more of its products to its current customers, and respond to its cardholders more quickly. Another Fair Isaac product, FICO Falcon Fraud Manager, lets credit-card issuers quickly and accurately identify fraudulent transactions. Falcon can cut fraud losses by over 50%. Moreover, it improves customer satisfaction by cutting down on false alarms. FICO recently signed up German-based s-Finanzgruppe for this software. ... Fair Isaac is now a buy.”
Patrick McKeough, Stock Pickers Digest, 8/11
