“So at a high level, we sort of know,” said David Silberman, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsible Lending, “but precisely what, what ‘credit history’ means and how it’s scored? Or what ‘types of credit’ means and how it’s scored? That’s all black box.” Nevertheless, there is an entire industry promising easy fixes to improve credit scores, some which work, and some that don’t. Credit scoring companies are aware of most of these strategies, and regularly update their models to account for new types of data and changing consumer behaviors.
