Think you have all the information you need because you know your credit score? Think again.

Those three-digit scores are important, but they’re just one of several numbers that can have a big impact on your future credit. Just last month, TransUnion launched a Payment Behaviour Score, which “analyzes every stage of the customer lifecycle” and predicts payment behavior.”

TransUnion already has a Credit Management Score, which “predicts an individual’s likelihood of 90-day default in the coming 12 months,” and a Personal Loan Score, an industry first credit-scoring tool designed to help businesses reduce delinquency of unsecured loans.

The two other major credit-reporting agencies, Experian and Equifax, have risk scores of their own. And so does Fair Isaac, the company that invented the FICO credit score.

One of the credit industry’s older risk management tools is the bankruptcy risk score, which predict your future by evaluating your past. They’ve been around since the late 1980s, but few consumers have access to the numbers or the ways each company determines them.

Like other credit risk scores, they’re designed for lenders, who may access them along with a credit report to evaluate an application for a new loan, mortgage or credit card, or during a periodic review of an existing account.

Bankruptcy scores weigh not how consumers pay their bills, but their spending habits and types of charges. Statistics show most consumers exhibit a gradual increase in spending for 18 months before filing for bankruptcy. The spending peaks about four months before they file, then drops off significantly in an effort to get things in order before taking the case before a bankruptcy judge.

The scoring models look for bankruptcy predictors, including:

• increases in the customer’s spending pattern
• an increase in applications for credit
• A new credit card issued by a store rather than a bank
• Charges from gaming casinos; excessive charges from pharmacies/auto repair shops; frequent restaurant charges without frequent travel charges; frequent cash advance requests from a consumer making only minimal payments.

The scores may also evaluate consumers to see how closely they resemble the average person who files for bankruptcy in a given city or region.

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