Here’s why the average US credit score is falling

The average U.S. credit score slipped nationwide, largely due to the resumption of federal student loan delinquency reporting on U.S. consumers’ credit reports, according to FICO.

The scoring agency reported that the national average U.S. FICO score – used as a benchmark for assessing consumer credit risk – fell to 715, marking a one-point drop from January and a two-point decline from April 2024.

FICO scores, which range from 300 to 850, fluctuate based on updates to borrower behavior that is tracked by the three major U.S. consumer reporting agencies: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. These scores are used by banks and lenders to see who they can safely lend money to.

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FICO regularly publishes the national average score, offering key insight into the state of consumer credit. 

According to FICO, federal student loan delinquencies were once again reported on credit files as of February 2025, following the emergency multi-year pause on federal student loan interest and payments under the CARES Act and a one-year “on-ramp” grace period by the Department of Education, which protected federal borrowers from the significant consequences of not making their student loan payments.

The share of consumers with a more than 90-day delinquency in the past six months increased from 7.4% in January to 8.3% in February. That is the first time this figure has surpassed pre-pandemic levels. In January 2020, it was 8.1%, according to FICO.

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Tommy Lee, senior director of analytics and scores at FICO, said in a Wednesday blog post that 2.7 million borrowers had a new student loan delinquency reported as of February 2025, but about 5.4 million additional consumers had no student loan delinquency reported yet, even though they have not made any student loan payments since October 2024, and they had payments due. 

Those borrowers are also at risk of having their credit score impacted if they fail to make payments, and a new 90-day student loan delinquency is reported on their credit file. This could lead to more declines in the average FICO score over the next few months, according to Lee. 

Comparatively, about 12.4 million borrowers have made at least one payment on their student loan since October 2024 and are in a good position to maintain or improve their credit score if they continue to make timely payments. 

FICO also reported that some consumers also saw modest improvements in credit use, which is how much of someone’s total available credit they are using. That metric represents 30% of the FICO score. 

According to FICO, the average credit card use decreased from January to February due to seasonal reductions in credit card balances following the holidays. This helped partially offset the score decline, according to the scoring agency.