The authors are the organisers of the series of International Conferences on Credit Scoring and Credit Control. Lyn C Thomas is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a past president of the Operational Research Society, winner of the Presidents Medal. Jonathan N Crook is a winner of the Goodeve Medal, Operational Society 1999 (with L C Thomas and J L Banasik).

• A: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF CREDIT AND BEHAVIOURAL SCORING ; Legal, social and economic issues in implementing scoring in the US ; Problems in applying discriminant analysis in credit scoring models ; Behaviour scoring and adaptive control systems ; B: OBJECTIVES AND MEASURES IN CREDIT SCORING ; Measures for comparing scoring systems ; The use of affordability data - does it add real value? ; Improving lender offers using consumer preferences ; C: PRACTICAL IMPLEMENTATION OF SCORING SYSTEMS ; Updating scorecards: Removing the mystique ; Efficient frontier cut-off policies in credit portfolios ; D: FEATURES OF SCORING ; Can reject inference ever work? ; The flat-maximum effect and generic linear scoring models: a test ; The degradation of the scorecard over the business cycle ; Inferring the inferred ; E: OTHER APPLICATIONS OF SCORING IN CREDIT RISK ; Detecting credit card fraud using expert systems ; A single European scorecard ; Small sample scoring ; F: ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO SCORING SYSTEMS ; Survival analysis and the credit granting decision ; Graphical models in credit scoring ; Credit scoring using neural and evolutionary techniques ; Segmenting in Markov chain consumer credit behaviour models