You're presenting that as a rhetorical question with an "obvious" answer, but it's not obvious to me at all that the latter person is clearly a lower credit ris

You're presenting that as a rhetorical question with an "obvious" answer, but it's not obvious to me at all that the latter person is clearly a lower credit risk. Being financially stable enough that you never need to borrow any money seems like as much a positive indicator of creditworthiness as a history of paying off loans in time. I think you're bringing very US-centric prejudices to the table. In many countries there is no such thing as a credit score and having no credit history is considered equivalent to having a history of on-time payments. As long as you don't have any delinquent payments you're good. So clearly the financial institutions in these countries agree with my assessment.