Understanding FICO® Scoring

[Tazman81]

Well, on July 7th I pulled my Equifax FICO score from myfico.  It showed a score of 622.  I went into the bank today to try to refinance my vehicle.  Well, they pulled my Equifax Beacon score and it said it was 559.  So, my question is what is the different between the FICO score and the Beacon score?  I thought the FICO score was supposed to be the one that the banks used?  Can anyone offer any assistance regarding this?

[Lel]

The Equifax FICO score here is a "plain vanilla" Beacon 5.0 score.  However, there are other Beacon version out there that are used by different credit industries.  In your case, it seems likely that the bank pulled Equifax's "Beacon Auto Industry Option" score, which has slightly different scoring criteria and gives added weight to past auto loan history.

The link above describes the Beacon 09 model; the Beacon 5.0 Auto Industry Option is probably still being used by auto lenders.  Either way, this is one plausible explanation for the difference in scores.  Another possible explanation is that your bank has moved on to the plain vanilla Beacon 09 version of FICO, which would yield a different score from the Beacon 5.0 version.  However, the drastic difference in scores makes me think that this latter explanation is less likely.

[Tazman81]

Thank you for the information.  That does make sense.