Social Finance Inc.’s recent decision to stop using FICO scores when evaluating an applicant’s ability to repay a mortgage suggests that alternatives to the traditional credit-scoring model are catching hold. On Jan. 12, 2016, SoFi, a San Francisco-based online nonbank lender, announced it is no longer going to use FICO scores, which for years have been the basis for the origination of trillions of dollars in mortgage and consumer loans in the U.S. SoFi will still take into account ...