Climb Credit Score
Using Climb Credit Score to increase access to education
What it is
Climb Credit Score is a credit scoring service that uses machine learning to determine whether to extend credit to an applicant.
This model doesn’t just look at an applicant’s credit score to assign an interest rate. Instead, Climb Credit Score is able to use over 150 data points to analyze and assess their credit profile.
Because of this, we can gain a more holistic view of applicants and their credit histories — which opens the door for more people who otherwise may not have been included by a model that used FICOTM score alone.
How it works
At Climb, we’re committed to developing fair and inclusive financing solutions, and to increasing access to credit for all those looking to obtain professional and skills-based education focused on career training.
Because of this, we’ve partnered with industry experts to utilize their transparent and explainable lending models in creating Climb Credit Score, which may effectively analyze up to ten times more credit bureau data points and allow us to paint a more holistic picture of borrowers beyond just their credit score.
With a more comprehensive look at applicants, the model can expand credit access safely — it generates a more accurate risk assessment, while reducing the weight of variables that have been shown to correlate with race, gender, and ethnicity, which Climb does not use.
Here are just a few of the 150+ attributes our AI uses to evaluate applicants:
- Whether they have a co-borrower on the application who can help make payments if the borrower can’t
- How much of a credit limit has been given to other accounts that they have open
- Details of missed payments in their credit history to indicate how likely they are to miss future loan payments
- And much more!
At Climb, one of our values is to iterate and experiment, so we aim to continuously improve the experience for every person who applies for a Climb Loan. Climb Credit Score is just one of the innovations we have implemented to continuously serve our mission of expanding access to career-focused education.
