accurate FICO

[counselor4kids]

I thought I read somewhere that the FICO score a lender pulls up could be very different from the ones we view online (somtimes by 20-40 points). Is this true? If I pull my score directly from myfico.com will it be accurate? What are lenders pulling from?

[kb9tbq]

Well there is fruit then there are the break down of apples; oranges and such.

All 3 CRAs use FICO (most comon one used) but then they also develope & sell their own scores to consumers and creditors.

Now amoung each type of score - they break down further to models used by the creditors. My.fico is claiming to be what the creditors use (yes the use FICO) but there is still a deviation on what the model is that they use. You can consider this to be the closest match possible, but for exacts - nope.

Models are used for different industries like:

Auto Model

Personal Finance Model

Bankruptcy Model

Installment Model

Insurance Model

Credit Card Model

Ok, the differences in the models is what industry is using it, it will be grading on key information that is important to the industry, like for auto model, it will look at past auto loans, if you had been delinquent or had a repo.. If you look at bankruptcy model; this looks at your risk for filing bankruptcy (this is flipped from the others being that the higher the score the higher the risk).

The ones which consumers mostly look at are just grading everything equally; not fine tuned like the creditors. They all differ, just because you pull and use one score (and expect to show it to another creditor) does it mean they are going to be able to use it and apply it to their business.

Yes, I do believe that when looking at consumer scores you want to overshoot your efforts by 20-50 points, you never know what will be the difference - I have actually seen people with worse consumer scores then what the creditor fico scores where. You just never know what way they will swing.