Is Sync moving away from giving FICO scores?

[Anonymous]

Yesterday (8-19-2019) I logged into my Synchrony Amazon account to make a payment.  As I always do when logged into my account, I checked my credit score, my score was 703 TU Fico score 8 model.

Today (8-20-2019) I logged into my Synchrony Amazon account to check if my payment was posted.  Again, while checking my credit score, A notice appeared that the credit score has changed to Vantgage 4.0.  So I enrolled and my score for TU vantage 4.0 is 734.

Curious I checked my other Sychrony accounts (Lowes, PayPal MC and JCPenney) and indeed the credit score reflects TU vantage 4.0.

Is this the score Synchrony will use for new account approval or when requesting a CLI?

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

Obviously I don't know if Synchrony will change its credit score used for new accounts and account maintenance, but I will be you dollars to donuts that they will continue to use some version of the FICO score.    In all the years I've been on here, I have never heard of a single lender that uses Vantage scores.   I'm pretty sure that the reason that the reason Vantage scores are given away for free is that they are either free or much cheaper than the royalties that are paid to FICO for their proprietary scoring models.

Anybody who disagrees with me, please by all means let me know, but I'm guessing this is a cost issue only.   In fact when Vantage scores are shown they typically say "for educational purposes only," so not for lending purposes.

[coreysw12]

Not likely to be the only score they use for approvals (though, it might use it as part of their approval, in conjunction with FICO).

Probably they just got a better deal on buying VS4.0 scores for their credit score monitoring services than FICO was giving them, so they switched.

[staticvoidmain]

Can confirm. Here are my PayPal and Sam's Club accounts. It is a complete switch, unlike Amex who offers both.

[CreditCuriosity]

Care credit is still showing FICO, but speculate that will goto Vantage as well.  FYI Lowes has switched for me to Vantage just when i logged on awhile ago.  Think it is fair to say all Sync cards will be using vantage for at least the scores, not necessarily the approval as we have no way of knowing that info, but i speculate it will still be off of FICO scores as sync is VERY score driven on their limit tiers tied to FICO scores

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the replies.  Yes it makes sense that some banks offer free Vantage credit score vs FICO due to the cost to them.  I am curious if other banks will now drop the free FICO score and offer the new vantage 4.0.

[FlaDude]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Thanks for all the replies.  Yes it makes sense that some banks offer free Vantage credit score vs FICO due to the cost to them.  I am curious if other banks will now drop the free FICO score and offer the new vantage 4.0.

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Chase recently did the same with the Slate card, but I'm not sure if it is Vantage 4 or 3.

[DJH87]

Just signed into my Sam’s Club account to check my FICO score update. I was prompted to enroll in the new Advantage 4.0 Scoring System. Apparently TransUnion FICO is no longer available. I then checked my Walmart account which now does not offer any new score information. Maybe this is because of the pending transition to Cap1. I wonder if Synchrony will now rely on Advantage scoring for account approval and management. Any other Synchrony cards switched to Advantage scoring? In comparison, my Advantage score is higher than my FICO score.

[Jnbmom]

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Is-Lowes-Sync-moving-away-from-giving-FICO-scores/m-p/...

[Anonymous]

I have the Chase Freedom and Chase Freedom Unlimited for over two years and always only offered TU vantage 3.0 with there "Credit Journey" montoring system.