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Credit score war: FICO response to VantageScore

Posted on Jul 10, 2006 by Tom Fragala

The three consumer credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) recently announced their new VantageScore credit scoring system. In the past, I’ve written about it here and here. A while back I contacted Fair Isaac to get their perspective on this new credit score service which targets their FICO credit score that dominates the industry. Craig Watts, Public Affairs Manager for Fair Isaac Corporation was good enough to respond to my inquiry. Here’s what he said:

Fair Isaac is looking forward to commenting on the credit reporting agencies’ newest venture when we know more about their score and related claims. While the credit bureaus’ press release doesn’t mention Fair Isaac’s FICO score by name, the bureaus’ spokes people often referred to it by name in comments to the news media. So perhaps the following Fair Isaac comments about our FICO score will be of interest. 

• FICO credit scores are the standard measure of credit risk in the United States, and they are rapidly becoming the standard worldwide.  That’s a testament to the fact that the vast majority of lenders rely on FICO scores to make smart, objective lending decisions – and to extend credit opportunities to record numbers of consumers. 
• Since Fair Isaac pioneered credit scoring 50 years ago, competition has been a part of our industry. The FICO score continues to be used by 80% of the 50 largest banks in the United States to make the smartest possible lending decisions.  
• Nobody else can deliver the continuous innovation and investment that we apply to FICO scoring.  This commitment ensures that the FICO score is consistently and impartially updated to produce the fairest and most reliable prediction of credit risk using data from all three credit reporting agencies.