Wednesday, March 11, 2026 – Partners for Rural Transformation (PRT) announced a new partnership with global analytics software leader FICO to expand access to credit in historically underserved rural communities.
The partnership will strengthen the capacity of rural-serving Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to better understand, adopt, and use FICO tools to reach low-credit and ‘credit invisible’ rural Americans. Millions of Americans are deemed “credit invisible,” meaning they have no credit history through borrowing or repaying money from loans, credit cards, or other types of consumer credit. Being credit invisible can make it impossible to get a credit score, secure a loan for a new opportunity, or even borrow money in an emergency.
Partners for Rural Transformation President Farah Ahmad said: “Access to credit is the foundation that our futures are built on. However, too many people living in rural communities, especially those facing persistent poverty, lack access to credit and need to turn to more expensive non-traditional forms of capital. This can lead to cycles of debt that our partnership with FICO is trying to break.”
“Access to credit begins with understanding,” said Rukiya Kelly, Global Head of Corporate Impact at FICO. “Through our partnership with Partners for Rural Transformation, we are delivering targeted credit education, including our FICO® Score A Better Future Ambassador workshop, to strengthen the capacity of rural-serving CDFIs and the communities they support. By increasing clarity around how credit decisions are made and what drives a FICO® Score, we are helping build the confidence and knowledge that enable more informed financial choices and more sustainable pathways to opportunity.”
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, people living in rural communities are more likely to lack a credit history, and as a result are often forced to turn to non-traditional sources of credit like payday lenders. This can lead to a cycle of increasing debt in rural communities.
FICO’s alternative credit scoring models incorporate non-traditional data, like utility payments, checking account history, and rental history, to provide access to credit for “credit invisible” borrowers. However, many rural lenders lack the resources to adopt these new credit tools.
PRT’s partnership with FICO will help rural-serving CDFIs understand, adopt, and apply FICO tools, all in an effort to break debt cycles and expand opportunities in communities that need it most. Through this partnership, FICO and PRT, through its coalition of six CDFIs, will reach more than 400 counties and millions of people in rural communities facing persistent poverty in the Mississippi Delta, Deep South, Native Lands, Border Colonias, and Appalachia.
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Partners for Rural Transformation is a coalition of six community-rooted organizations with national reach and more than 250 years of experience in rural development. We are working to build a future where rural America is no longer defined by persistent poverty, but by opportunity so people can live, work, learn, and raise a family in the communities they call home. Our Partnership spans some of the most diverse and underinvested regions in the country – from the Mississippi Delta to Appalachia to Native American Communities, the Deep South, The Rio Grade Valley, and beyond. We share a common history of chronic disinvestment that leads to persistent poverty and impacts health, education, and economic opportunity in the communities we call home. Learn more here.
About FICO: FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 80 countries do everything from protecting 4 billion payment cards from fraud, to improving financial inclusion, to increasing supply chain resiliency. The FICO® Score, used by 90% of top US lenders, is the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the US and has been made available in over 40 other countries, improving risk management, credit access and transparency.
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