What Drives a Credit Score?

I frequently get questions from consumers wanting to understand what credit information in their credit report is most important or most heavily weighted in the calculation of their credit score. Each person’s score is unique as it reflects projected risk based on credit information resident on that person’s credit file at the time the lender requests a score and credit report to make a lending decision.

Both FICO and VantageScore provide information regarding each category of credit behavior their scores take into account, and the relative importance of each in determining a credit score.

Pie Chart: Credit attributes contributing to a VantageScore. Source:www.VantageScore.com

Pie Chart: Credit attributes contributing to a FICO Score. Source:www.myfico.com

You can see that there is some variation in categories used by each of the two companies, as well as the percent of contribution a given category represents. Each company that develops a credit risk scoring system has its own unique approach and the final scoring models will differ. While the pie charts do illustrate variations, they also show that there are similarities in the two models. Both scoring systems show that the three fundamental aspects of good credit management practices are what really drive a good credit score and hold true regardless of score version: