VantageScore(sm) Credit Score from Equifax, Experian and Trans Union

Consumers, View Your 3 Bureau Credit Report and 3 Credit Scores Online Now - Click Here!

Vantage Score (sm) Credit Score from Equifax, Experian and Trans Union

The 3 national credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union) announced a joint venture to produce a credit score for businesses and consumers called the VantageScore(sm). The three credit agencies compete with each other in providing credit report and associated products to consumers and businesses alike. The VantageScore (sm) marks the first time the three have joined forces to produce a scoring model that scores consumers across all three companies.

The new credit score is expected to compete in the marketplace with such products as the FICO (sm) Score from Fair Issac and Companies. FICO scores have long dominated the credit scoring industry and are the most recognized scores used in transactions such as home mortgages and home refinancing. The new VantageScore (sm) should be available to businesses immediately and rolled out to consumers later this year.

The new score will have a score range of 501 to 990. The higher the score the more creditworthy the applicant because a higher score theoretically predicts the applicant has a lower risk of default in a financial transaction.

The VantageScore (sm) will use the same scoring criteria across all three national credit reporting agencies. The result should make scores more consistent and less variable. However, there will still be differences in your credit score from one agency to the next if your credit data in one bureau is different from the other credit bureau. That happens even though the scoring algorithm will be the same.

The VantageScore (sm) has been constructed after review of the credit histories from 15 million sample credit files. Generally that means the score developers look at the credit report attributes in a consumer’s credit file at a point in time and look at it again some time later and see if there has been a serious default in the credit history. By looking at the factors before and after a default, the score developer can statistically measure the factors that may have predicted the default. The end result is a statistical measure of the risk of a consumer defaulting on a financial obligation. It does mean the consumer will default. It only means a consumer with a lower credit score has a higher probability of defaulting.

The new score is also advertised to be more predictive for consumers with limited credit data on file at the credit bureaus. Such “thin-file” consumers with limited credit histories have been difficult to score in the past. The new score should therefore help consumers with a limited credit history to at least be scorable.