Your credit score could be getting lower this year, after a recent announcement by Fair Isaac Corporation, the company that creates the FICO credit score.

Fair Isaac’s newest scoring model in over five years, FICO 10, has declared that it will start incorporating consumers’ debt levels into their scoring model. Sources say that about 80 million consumers will see a change of 20 points or more to their score under the new model.

Peoples Bank Guthrie County Market President Dennis Flanery points out that not all lenders use the FICO credit score, but if a majority of financial institutions upgrade to the newest model, others will follow suit, “One of the biggest changes they’re looking at is how you’ve handled your credit over a two year period versus month by month and what I mean by that is you might have been able to affect your affect your credit score by doing something for within a couple months to make it look better and then all of sudden your credit score jumps up. Now it’s going to take a longer period of time for it to improve because they’re going to look over a longer two year period.”

Flanery says this change gives greater credence to making timely payments and not carrying high credit balances in order to maintain a good credit score. You can hear more on credit scores from Flanery during our Special Edition In Depth Health and Wealth Magazine here.