FAKO vs. FICO

[Anonymous]

We're avoiding having the lender pull our credit again so we don't have too many inquires.  With that said, how far off is FICO from the FAKO score?  We've used freecreditreport.com  just for the benefit of being able to pull our own reports daily.

So if my husband is at 561, 564, 560 per that website, what is reasonable to assume FICO is?  I do understand there is very little that is REASONABLE with credit scoring.

Also, what website is the best/most accurate for daily monitoring?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

No way to know.  But they can be VERY different.  There is not a correlation.

You can find out yourself if you pull your EQ and TU scores from this website.  This website sells the same scores that most lenders use.

[sinceregal09]

I agree with Jesslyn.  Pull your Transunion and Equifax scores here first. 

Earlier this year, I started monitoring my credit reports due to some false accounts. I knew Transunion and Experian scores were not true FICO ones (using the credit monitoring from the actual bureau sites), but it was an avenue for me to see if there were any changes on my account quickly.

At any rate, for my situation, Equifax scores had always been the lowest.  When we were able to pull Experian scores on here, Experian was pretty close to Transunion.

I made the decision to give up on my Equifax score and once my Experian PLUS score hit the almost 700 mark, I authorized my lender to pull our scores.  Reason being, while the FAKO score isn't a true FICO, at the very least, I figured that my FICO score HAD to be over 620. 

You will run across alot of threads where some folk have had the experince that Experian was 100 points less than what their lender pulled, and others where the two scores were fairly close.

I ended up being in the latter category.  My lender pull with Bank of America was on 7/21.  Transunion FAKO was about 40 points less than myFICO.  myFICO score was 5 points less than what my lender pulled.  On the trimerge report, it states that for Transunion, FICO CLASSIC 2004 was used. 

Equifax agreed 100% with the scores pulled on myFICO for both me and my husband. EQUIFAX BEACON 5.0 was used.

For Experian, they used EXPERIAN/FAIR, ISAAC V2.  Now that I am looking at the report again, it's funny because both things happened to us.  For me, my Experian FICO was about 10 points less than what Experian FAKO showed.  Yet for my husband, his Experian FICO was almost 60 points more than what we pulled off of the Experian FAKO site. 

At any rate, even when we used the FAKOs, it was more how much above 620 were we before we decided to have the lender pull.  For my husband, his Equifax and Transunion FICOs pulled off of his site were high enough that we assumed Experian would be his lowest.  In reality, Transunion was the lowest, so the scores that counted for him were Equifax and Experian.  For me, Experian and Transunion were the highest.  When they compared all the scores, my Experian was used as the lowest score.

Good Luck!