Credit Scoring Companies

The main players in the credit score field are, of course, the three national credit bureau agencies: Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union. Your credit scores are based on the contents of your credit report, so the contents of your three national credit files and the accuracy of that information, is most important in determining how high your scores are. Order your 3-bureau merged credit report, or see your single credit report, credit score, and personalized detailed explanation now.

Each credit reporting agency has a different brand name for their main scoring model:

• For Equifax, it is called the Beacon Score
• For Experian, it is called the FICO Score
• For Trans Union, it is called the Empirica Score

Your Beacon, FICO, and Empirica credit scores will almost always be different, even though the scoring models within each of them were jointly developed with Fair, Isaac and Co.

A major reason for the difference: Beacon relies on Equifax data, FICO relies on Experian data, and Empirica relies on Trans Union data. The three bureaus don't share information with one another. They have different ways of representing your data. They have different business customers making inquiries about you. Often, there are differences in which companies report to them. This results in scores that could be very different.

VantageScore

In early 2006, the three credit bureaus announced a new score model, called VantageScore. Now, for the first time, a score model is available that uses the same computations, the same scoring scale, and the same reason codes, whether the data comes from Experian, Equifax, or TransUnion. Significant differences will occur only when the bureaus have used different sources or time frames to collect the data about you.

VantageScore evaluates your credit as a number from 501 to 990. The ranges 901-990, 801-900, 701-800, 601-700 and 501-600 denote A, B, C, D, F ratings, respectively, much like letter grades in school.

It will be a while before VantageScore is widely used by credit grantors. They'll need to do their own studies to determine how the new scores compare to those from Fair, Isaac, and Company, and whether or not the new scores do a better job of predicting creditworthiness.  It may also take some time for the bureaus to begin disclosing VantageScore to individual consumers.

A Scoring Model for any Need

Trans Union's Empirica scores come many variations, each of which is different. There's a version for automobile financing, a version for installment loans, a version for bank cards, and a version for personal finance. The same applies to Experian's FICO scores and Equifax's Beacon scores. In addition to the generally available scoring models, many credit grantors have customized models for their own particular needs.

The Old and New Fico Score

From time to time, computation methods and weightings in a scoring model are updated, but many lenders want to stay with the old "algorithm", because they've built their decision rules over time and they aren't ready to change. So, for example, there's Empirica 95, and the current version of Empirica. There's Beacon 96, and the old version of Beacon. There's FICO and "classic FICO".

Credit Score Reason Codes

Credit scoring companies

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