It seemed to go highly unnoticed by the blogosphere that two weeks ago Experian decided it would no longer be participating in FICO’s consumer business division. Huh? What does this mean?
It means that you will no longer be able to obtain the commonly used FICO score that will be reported based on Experian’s data, but your banker, boss, and financial institutions can. That doesn’t seem fair. But according to Experian, it’s no big deal; their website states:
“This change by no means eliminates your ability to obtain your credit score and assess your creditworthiness.
There is no one credit score that all financial institutions use to make decisions and there is also no one credit score that consumers must use to help them understand and manage their credit.
There are many reputable credit scores on the market that you can use to evaluate your creditworthiness before making financial decisions. Such credit scores include VantageScoreSM, PLUS Score® and others which are developed by the three national credit reporting companies or third parties. All of these credit scores provide prediction of your credit risk.
You have many options for obtaining your credit score, and a few of those options are listed below:
- Experian.com provides the ability for you to obtain your three national credit reports and credit scores based on data from all three national credit reporting companies.
- AnnualCreditReport.com provides you with access to a free annual credit report from each of the national credit reporting companies as well as an option to purchase a credit score along with the report.
This development has no impact on how lenders and other credit issuers evaluate your creditworthiness. Experian continues to offer its own scores, FICO scores and other credit risk scores to its business clients to enable their credit-granting decisions.”
While it may have no bearing on how different lenders view you, it limits your information as to how you are being evaluated, and seems to be just another push for the Experian scores. The major credit reporting agencies have been seeming to attempt a beeline out from under FICO for a while now, but this seems highly unfair to the consumer.
