When looking for your credit scores, you may have seen VantageScore and wondered what it is, and if it’s different from other scores. Actually, there are some key differences in the VantageScore, and it’s helpful to you, the consumer, to know what they are, as well as what the score means in general for you…. Read More

Last week, VantageScore, the 7-year-old credit scoring company owned by the three major nationwide consumer credit reporting agencies (CRAs) — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — took a big step in the direction of making credit scores easier for consumers to understand, as it abandoned the score range of 501-990 it has used since inception. With… Read More

Consumers want credit scores that are fair. Lenders want to know that the credit scores they use do a good job of predicting whether people will pay their bills on time. And those two goals sometimes seem to be at odds, at least judging from comments we hear from consumers about their scores. Consider these… Read More

In a move that could have a wide-ranging impact on both the credit scoring business and the availability of credit to consumers, VantageScore Solutions today announced the latest version of its credit scoring model. The company says that the new model, called VantageScore 3.0, has the ability to generate credit scores for tens of millions… Read More

We’ve been inundated with news stories about the housing market recovery, along with a few counter-arguments by skeptics who think we still have a long way to go. These analyses tend to focus on prices, sales or new homes built. While those figures are important, they often leave out an important factor: credit. To buy… Read More

It’s been seven years since VantageScore (Vantage) appeared on the credit scoring scene to challenge Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), following years of FICO’s dominance that led to its credit bureau risk scores becoming the industry standard for lenders making prescreened credit offers, approving or denying applications for new credit, and managing their existing credit accounts…. Read More

The holiday shopping season is now in full swing. Malls and other retail outlets have their decorations up and holiday music playing, enticing us all to shop for our friends and family. And as inevitable as hearing “Frosty the Snowman” is the chorus of checkout clerks asking shoppers if they’d like to open store credit… Read More

The credit gap continues to widen, and it’s showing up in Americans’ credit card limits. According to the latest Experian-Oliver Wyman Market Intelligence reports, a quarterly analysis of consumer credit trends, only people with top credit scores have watched their credit limits fully recover from the Great Recession. Everyone else, including people with perfectly good scores,… Read More

I also received my PLUS score from Experian when I received their credit report. So I’m wondering if Experian is actually using the new FICO model? Or are then simply calling their FICO scores by a different name? I’m very confused as myFICO shows me yet another credit score…?

With all this recent controversy about FICO credit scores, it is interesting to note that there are other credit scoring models that have always excluded authorized user accounts. According to an Equifax press release, the VantageScore and Equifax Risk Score 3.0 have never included authorized user accounts in their score calculations.