Changes in how the most widely used credit score in the U.S. is tallied reportedly will likely make it harder for many Americans to get loans.

Credit-scoring company Fair Isaac Corp. is making changes that will create a bigger gap between consumers deemed to be good and bad credit risks, the Wall Street Journal said.

Fair Isaac, creator of FICO scores, will start scoring consumers with rising debt levels and those who fall behind on loan payments more harshly. It will also flag certain consumers who sign up for personal loans, a category of unsecured debt that has surged in recent years, WSJ.com reported.

The changes will create a bigger gap between consumers deemed to be good and bad credit risks, the company told WSJ.com.

"Consumers with already-high FICO scores of about 680 or higher who continue to manage loans well will likely get a higher score than under previous FICO versions. Those with already-low scores below 600 who continue to miss payments or accumulate other black marks will experience bigger score declines than under previous models," the Journal explained.

Meanwhile, Wall Street banks and regional lenders could see an increase in the $250 billion they have to spend annually to meet U.S. requirements for doing business in lower-income communities as regulators prepare to overhaul the Community Reinvestment Act.

The changes proposed last month by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would boost demand for lending by big banks, the regulators say, but they also would get pre-approved lists of qualifying activities that could eliminate a lot of the guesswork that is currently required, Bloomberg reported.

“The larger banks should welcome this, and it should allow them to do more in the communities in which they operate,” said OCC chief Joseph Otting, a former banker who has made rewriting CRA his top agenda item at the agency.

The 1977 law, meant to encourage lenders to extend credit in lower-income areas, hasn’t been updated since the rise of the internet and online banking. Banks are graded on how well they’re meeting expectations, and those scores are considered by regulators when lenders seek to open new branches or make acquisitions.