More than a third of bank and credit union professionals (34 percent) store consumers’ FICO scores on a monthly basis, but given the approaching requirements of CECL, they may want to rethink that approach, financial analysis firm Sageworks said recently.

Sageworks conducted that poll during a January webinar that was part of its CECL Methodology series. The firm asked 453 professionals which risk-based metric they store on a monthly basis for consumer loans. In addition to the 34 percent relying on FICO scores, another 29 percent said the risk rating was the metric they store on a monthly basis. Sixteen percent said that risk level or classification is stored on a monthly basis, but 21 percent said they do not store any of the risk-based metrics for consumer loans.

“What is most telling from the poll isn’t the heavy reliance on FICO; it’s that almost a quarter of the audience wasn’t collecting this data on a go-forward basis. It’s possible that the institutions in this segment are collecting it on a quarterly basis or maybe keeping only the most-recent snapshot,” Neekis Hammond, a principal with Sageworks Advisory Services, said in a statement. “But given the forward-looking measures of CECL calculations, institutions will need data that allows them to more granularly measure credit risk and changes in risk over time. The metrics offered in the poll would be good proxies for credit risk in the consumer pool, where many small-balance loans can make up a significant part of the portfolio.”

In preparation for the expected loss model in the allowance, institutions are evaluating their existing data aggregation policies to assess how those plans may need to change by pool. Creating an automated or manual rating matrix that combines FICO with originated or recent loan-to-value ratio, as well as historical payment behavior, now may prove to be a very valuable move in financial reporting periods to come, Hammond said.