NACM survey shows proprietary scoring inappropriate, impractical for many respondents.(TRADELINE)(national association of credit management)

NACM's July Survey question, "Do you use a proprietary credit scoring system in your day-to-day evaluation of accounts?" showed that a majority of respondents do not use a proprietary system, with 67.8% of participants responding "no" and a still-significant 32.2% of respondents answering "yes" Many respondents who answered "no" indicated in their comments that they were either in the process of creating their own proprietary scoring system or that they were looking into it. Many also indicated that, instead of their own proprietary systems, they use scoring systems offered by a number of different software vendors.

A common refrain heard from a number of respondents who don't rely on a proprietary scoring model for their day-to-day evaluations was that the current economic situation is preventing, rather than necessitating, the use of credit scoring. "We do not have a large volume of applications and have been able to process them without a scoring model since our industry is down right now and nothing is following the old normal patterns" said one respondent. "Because my management has decreased staffing in the credit department, I have not had the time to develop a credit scoring system. My department has gone from five people to only my position," said another respondent.

Several other reasons were given for why credit scoring was impractical, including customer base and industry concerns. "The nature of our customer base ...