topic Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison in Understanding FICO® Scoring

FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

RRinTN — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:25:54 GMT

I would like to share what I have found where trying to understand the correlation between FICO and Vantage scores. I welcome critical comments and positive suggestions for the following: I was unable to find an accurate formula that converted a Vantage score to a FICO score. I went back and I compared the stated ranges of credit (for example: Excellent, Very Good, Good and so on for FICO / A, B, C, and so on for Vantage). Using information from research I determined that an "A" Vantage score was comparable to an "Excellent" FICO score and similarly a "B" Vantage score was comparable to a "Very Good" FICO score in terms of how lenders adjust interest rates. Using this information I created a cross matrix of scores for each showing the Low End, Middle, and High End scores of each range. I then continued to split the numbers as shown below. I was surprised to see my current Vantage and FICO scores fit this model. I do believe that the model looses some predicatability in the lowest ranges because FICO actually has 6 ranges (Very Bad not shown) and Vantage has 5, I compensated by combining the lowest two FICO ranges into one.

Vantage®

Low ----- Mid ----- High Range

901 923 946 968 990 A

801 826 851 875 900 B

701 726 751 775 800 C

601 626 651 675 700 D

501 526 551 575 600 F

FICO®

Low ----- Mid ----- High Range

720 753 785 818 850 Excellent

690 697 705 712 719 Very Good

660 667 675 682 689 Good

620 630 640 649 659 Poor

350 417 485 552 619 Bad

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

beamMEup — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 16:04:14 GMT

Sorry, RRinTn, there is no meaningful correlation. I totally understand your desire to make it so, but it just ain't there.

FICO uses a different algorithm or set of algorithms than Vantage. They are complex little beasties. As John Ulzheimer, who has worked with both Fair Isaac and Equifax puts it, rockets scientists have nothing on the guys that put your credit scores together.

Unfortunately, it's not like translating celsius to fahrenheit. Vantage varies from FICO in it's very first "step" - Vantage first groups consumers into one of 12 homogeneous segments and then calculates the consumer’s VantageScore within the segment . FICO's scoring "buckets" and all the intricacies within the "buckets" are different. That is why your Vantage score can go down, while your FICO score goes up - and vice versa.

The most predictable way of determining your FICO score is to pull it, or check it out when a creditor pulls it for you. See Barry's latest blog entry on Lenders Providing Scores.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

llecs — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 04:01:33 GMT

To add, I recently pulled my TU FICO and Vantage via TU through CK's site and on the same day, my Vantage score was in the D range and my TU FICO was in the "Very Good" range. Both cannot be true and thankfully my lender didn't use Vantage. BTW, for those reading FICO's ranges as shown on the FICO reports are different. I think it goes from Bad to Great with 660-719 being "Good" and 720-759, I believe, being Very Good and then Great 760 and up. I think "Not Good" is 580(?) to 659 and Bad below that.

On the VS score, their formula is wacked out as mentioned. It factors in stuff that FICO does not and vice-versa. The one difference that impacts quite a few is that VS doesn't factor in AUs and FICO does. Util is treated very differently too.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

MarineVietVet — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 04:08:39 GMT

To add just one more piece here is how FICO and VS breakdown different aspects of your score.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

smallfry — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 16:54:29 GMT

You know marine based on that chart you posted the scores should be fairly similar. Not exact but the scoring logarithm is more alike than not. I don't see why there are such big differences between the 2.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

llecs — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:14:35 GMT

smallfry wrote:
You know marine based on that chart you posted the scores should be fairly similar. Not exact but the scoring logarithm is more alike than not. I don't see why there are such big differences between the 2.

One big difference is "available credit". FICO scores on your balance in relation to your CL. VS scores on available credit in relation to the CL. In FICO scoring, you can have mere hundreds in CLs and still have a 800 FICO. That's not the case with VS; you need to have high CLs in order to have a higher score.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

MattH — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 19:27:51 GMT

As others have said, there does not exist a direct conversion because the underlying formulas differ. Probably the best one can do is to compare percentages of the population who fall in various score ranges, as given here:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Formula-for-converting-the-Vantange-score-into-a-rough-FICO/m-p/652126/highlight/true#M45396

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

beamMEup — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 21:55:16 GMT

This type of chart is appealing - however there is still not an across the board equivalency. C

omparing FICO to Vantage is not the same as converting celsius to fahrenheit.

The difference being that I can be in the upper 90% on FICO but can (and will) be only in the upper 76% on Vantage. Or vice versa.

We still go back to different algorithms.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

smallfry — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 01:13:53 GMT

beamMEup wrote:
This type of chart is appealing - however there is still not an across the board equivalency. C
omparing FICO to Vantage is not the same as converting celsius to fahrenheit.
The difference being that I can be in the upper 90% on FICO but can (and will) be only in the upper 76% on Vantage. Or vice versa.
We still go back to different algorithms.

Yep. My EX from PSECU is 788. Vantage is 950 and the score you get from Quizzle is only 736 out of 850. Never could figure that one out.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

hateAshbury — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 02:59:09 GMT

If a large enough number of persons posted both FICO and Vantage, one could generate a reasonable mapping between the two scales. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be more than workable and would certainly be "good enough"

That said, here are my stats:

696 TransUnion FICO (as of Feb 1, 2012)

745 VantageScore (as of Mar. 12, 2012)

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

GregB — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:30:15 GMT

The entire concept is a complete waste of time.

One change on a report will often move them in opposite directions.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

cashnocredit — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:43:06 GMT

VantageScore and FICO are both validated scores based on large samples even though VantageScore is perhaps 10% of FICO's market share. As to which is more predictive, who knows but there are some clues. FICO taylors each score to an individual CRA since CRAs historically have different levels of reporting completeness. This means that different algorithms are in place at each CRA even for the same generation of FICO score. This produces the most accurate risk estimate for the folks in each CRA database but has the counterintuitive effect of having more variation between each CRA for the same person. VantageScore tries to make scores more closely match between CRAs by ignoring data that often differs between CRAs. For instance, a year ago my VantageScore was at 92% (better than) while FICO was at %39 (better than). This was due to VantageScore not factoring in a lien that FICO did use. I verified this when my Vantage Score didn't change after the lien dropped. This cumulative percentile variance is roughly the difference between 680 and 810 on the FICO scale.

So even if you use the most accurate way to compare scores, the cumulative percentile, they can differ wildly.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

Cdnewmanpac — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:13:51 GMT

Sorry. As others have said, you cannot do it. Their correlation coefficient is close to zero. In addition to differences in how credit limit is factored in, vantage ignores authorized user accounts. Neither scale is linear and neither publishes their curve. This is like trying to determine the relationship between the stock market and television ratings. If you make the sample size small enough, a correlation will appear. But it will be the result of random chance, not because an actual relationship exists.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

hateAshbury — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 01:26:28 GMT

Someone explain, either logically or empirically, how two systems purportedly designed to measure the same thing -- a borrower's creditworthiness -- could possibly be uncorrelated. That makes no sense at all. Celsius and Fahrenheit are two different scalings of the same measure: temperature. Does anyone doubt that the two are highly correlated?

But again, if people were to post their two scores, the question of correlation could be answered empirically.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

cashnocredit — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 01:48:57 GMT

hateAshbury wrote:
Someone explain, either logically or empirically, how two systems purportedly designed to measure the same thing -- a borrower's creditworthiness -- could possibly be uncorrelated. That makes no sense at all. Celsius and Fahrenheit are two different scalings of the same measure: temperature. Does anyone doubt that the two are highly correlated?

But again, if people were to post their two scores, the question of correlation could be answered empirically.

There is little doubt VantageScore correlates, in the mathematical sense, with FICO scores but the general public uses the term more loosely. People often confuse differences of scale and offset with being uncorrelated. For instance the C and F temperature scales, while different, are mathematically perfectly correlated (R==1). Since both FICO and VantageScore are validated credit scores that predict serious delinquency risk on the basis of extremely large numbers of CRA report samples they simply have to be "correlated." But here's the rub. Scores can be highly correlated yet vary tremendously for any given individual. These variations are, for the largest, due to corner cases where the statistical sample is small and major factors are either included or not. Vantagescore methodology seeks to ignore factors that are likely to differ significantly in credit reports. For instance older liens and AUs may not be factored into VantageScores but are in FICO scores. This can distort VantageScores in the 10% or so of folks with PR liens.

That long history AUs tend to raise FICO scores spawned a cottage industry of folks selling AUs to people in need of higher credit scores. This is done with zero risk exposure since the AU never even gets their card let alone can charge anything. It really is gaming the system. Newer FICO scores are dealing with this to a degree but the older ones are the main ones still in use and are still being gamed. Since FICO scores are the mainstay of the mortgage industry, FICO risk model change is hard and slow. Do the widely used "custom scores" that FICO helps create with CC lenders look for AU gaming? I don't know but I can guess.

Anyway, both of these are corner cases and people with one or the other can expect significant difference in scores even after rescaling. But there are other differences as well such as the fact that FICO doesnt factor in total CLs but only ratios. VantageScore, and some of the FAKOs do and high limits bumps these scores. Is it really predictive? I don't know. There is another problem. The fact scores are 3 digit numbers conveys an unrealistic expection that a score is some sort of precise measure. By it's very nature it isn't. It attempts to be an estimate of your future risk based solely on some information in your credit report. It has been a long slow slog to produce good predictive scores. FICO has decades of experience developing and refining these models and there are some measures of how well they work. For instance, the better a model is the higher the ratio of projected risk is between the top quartile and the bottom quartile when the algorithms are applied to large, seperately selected samples. These have increased as FICO comes out with new generations.

So again, when I was in the 90% on VantageScore and 40% on FICO it was because of factors that made me an outlier statistically. As for which was right, I can say the risk of me defaulting in the next 2 years is way, way under 1% since I'm retired and have income and savings that far exceed my yearly expenses. These, however, are factors neither FICO nor VantageScore can glean from my credit report or anyone elses.

None the less FICO remains the gold standard. Remember, when you see a score go down or up 3 points, or even 10 or 20 don't ascribe a lot of significance to it. It's not a label on how good you are as a human being. It's just a very fuzzy estimate of risk using large numbers of other people's histories.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

crunching_numbers — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 18:31:04 GMT

There is definately some factoring of AU in Vantage. I removed $29K of AU debt from my TU CR, creditkarma gave me a 61 point jump in my Vantage score, from 804 to 865. This was entirely the dropping of the 3 accts.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

cashnocredit — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:13:19 GMT

crunching_numbers wrote:
There is definately some factoring of AU in Vantage. I removed $29K of AU debt from my TU CR, creditkarma gave me a 61 point jump in my Vantage score, from 804 to 865. This was entirely the dropping of the 3 accts.

Could be. The original VantageScore didn't include AU accounts but apparently the most recent version 2.0, does. Nice to know CreditKarma's VantageScores are the latest version.

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/jeremy-simon-bad-credit-authorized-user-card-1508.php

"Due to requests from the market, the company began including authorized user accounts when it launched the second version of its score, known as VantageScore 2.0, in October 2010, Burns says."

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

marty56 — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:08:33 GMT

GregB wrote:
The entire concept is a complete waste of time.

One change on a report will often move them in opposite directions.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

MattH — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 01:39:38 GMT

hateAshbury wrote:
Someone explain, either logically or empirically, how two systems purportedly designed to measure the same thing -- a borrower's creditworthiness -- could possibly be uncorrelated. That makes no sense at all. Celsius and Fahrenheit are two different scalings of the same measure: temperature. Does anyone doubt that the two are highly correlated?

But again, if people were to post their two scores, the question of correlation could be answered empirically.

A full answer to your question would get into fairly advanced statistics such as covariance and correlation, but here is a simplified explanation. Suppose FICO scores and Vantage scores each captured about 80 percent of the overall variation of credit risk among individuals. I dunno the actual degree of correlation, what a statistician would call "r-squared," but I doubt it could be higher than 80 percent and it might be a lot lower. Well, if the r-squared for each model is about 80 percent then since they are independent implementations the r-squared FOR PREDICTING ONE SCORE GIVEN THE OTHER would be about 64 percent. Now if you are a lender using Vantage Scores, you don't really care how well Vantage scores predict FICO scores, you only care how well Vantage scores predict credit risk. But if you are a consumer trying to predict how a lender who uses FICO scores will judge you, then your Vantage score is of very little value for that purpose. "A=B" and "B=C" imply that "A=C" because equality is transitive, but APPROXIMATE EQUALITY MAY NOT BE TRANSITIVE.

Re: FICO to Vantage Score Ranges Comparison

cashnocredit — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 04:34:26 GMT

Lol.

And I have yet to see someone say: "my FICO is 750, what would my VantageScore be?"