Economic Benefit of Powerful Credit Scoring

In this paper, we study the economic benets from using credit scoring models. We contribute to the literature by relating the discriminatory power of a credit scoring model to the optimal credit decision. Given the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve of the credit scoring model, we derive a) the profit-maximizing cutoff regime and b) the pricing curve. In addition, we study a stylized loan market model with banks that differ in the quality of their credit scoring model. We find that profitability varies substantially among lenders. More powerful credit scoring models lead to economically significant differences in credit portfolio performance.