Why are my FICO scores different than the Lender's FICO score

[Anonymous]

I have been monitoring my credit report and scores with all three agencies for the past 60 days.  I am trying to qualify for a mortgage and I discovered several incorrect items on my credit report.  I disputed the items and they were removed.  My EQ FICO score increased 80 points and I happily called the mortgage company back with the good news.  TU and EX have increased approximately 60 points as well.  They checked and found no change in my FICO scores for all three.  Now I am confused and frustrated.

Isn't FICO the standard method for computing a credit score?  Why is the credit score I get from EQ, EX, and TU different than what the mortgage lender gets if everyone is reporting FICO scores? Is there a different FICO score reported to consumers than lenders? Can anyone shed any light on why EQ reports a 80 point increase and the lender reports no change?

[guiness56]

Hi and welcome to the forums.

The consumer can no longer purchase their EX FICO score.  They have not been able to in a while.  Since you are including EX as one you pulled, I have to guess these are FAKO scores.

The only place you can get your EQ and TU FICOs are on myFICO, Equifax.com and Transunioncs.com.  You can't just buy the score, you have to purchase the report also.

The scores you get when you get a 3 in 1 are scores that are developed by the individual CRAs and have nothing to do with FICO.

Even FICO has different models that are in use and not all of them will be exactly alike.

Depending on what is on your report will make a difference in how much and fast a FICO score will rise. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info.  So the score I got from EX is a FAKO?  What is the point of monitoring my credit if it doesn't relate to the lender's score?

[guiness56]

Where did you get your EQ and TU scores?

You can get your actual EQ and TU FICO scores from here and the other two sights I told you.

Each creditor may use a different FICO model which may make a difference in the scores.  But, since they are still FICOs, there should not be a huge variance.

[diveforfun97]

I have been using a couple different monitoring systems.  As previous mentioned in this thread, you can not buy your own EX score.  I have learned that some credit montioring sites use different systems like Experian PLUS, and VantageScore.  Both these systems use the same info from the report but puts a different weight on different areas, and the also use a different scale.  Supposedly, it is supposed to be a decent ESTIMATION, however in my case it wasn't.  If I were in your shoes (kinda am in the same boat), I would get your true score that the lenders use from this site (or the other two that were mentioned earlier) and see the same score that the lenders do.  Here you can get you EQ and TU, when both of those scores exceed the number that you were looking for, hopefully EX will follow suit.  Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

I got my TU - 654 score from myFICO and and EQ - 664 from Equifax.  The lender is reporting TU-620 and EQ-583.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice.  I have been using several sites for credit monitorin but I think it might be best just to use MyFICO?  Expeian and TrueCredit are not actually true FICO scores right?

[guiness56]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for the advice.  I have been using several sites for credit monitorin but I think it might be best just to use MyFICO?  Expeian and TrueCredit are not actually true FICO scores right?

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Correct, they are not true FICO scores.

[diveforfun97]

I would stick with this site (if I were you).  Again you can see what the lender sees, and continue to get the great FREE advice!!  I hope that it works out for you!

[wednesdayaddamsd]

Those are some pretty big discrepancies. I have heard that mortgage lenders pull something called a "residential mortgage credit report" that factors different things into your score, so it may be that they have a different score model. I know when a mortgage lender pulled my score years ago it was awful, and that was when I had no late payments on anything. It was really disturbing at the time.

I feel for you! Did the lender get the report that showed the changes that caused your score to increase?