FICO, the source of the FICO credit score, and Equifax, one of the big three credit reporting agencies, have teamed up to produce a tool to help credit unions and other financial institutions better predict their members' economic behavior.

The goal, a FICO executive explained, was not to replace or automate the loan underwriting process but to provide loan officers more information about members and what they might do in given economic circumstances and thus enable them to price the loan more correctly.

The tool, called the FICO Economic Impact Index, will be available with only the Equifax BEACON 09 credit scores and will use economic forecast data provided by Moody Investor Services to predict how a credit score should be calibrated to reflect different economic situations. Thus, an economic score of 700 might slide 27 points in the most dire circumstance in the broader economy, but only 13 points if the economic slide is followed by a sharp and speedy recovery.