@Anonymous wrote:
Are there statistics on what credit scoring systems are used by mortgage lenders? I understand that FICO is one of the most established ones, but the statistical analysis they are doing is not really rocket science and I don't see why the CBs with the same data can not do as good risk prediction as Fair Isaac. And when I ask for a FICO score product, EX, EF, and TU hardly miss an opportunity to tell me that their alternate favorite scoring model is used by 70% (or some such high fraction) of lenders.
So, what fraction of lenders use FICO? And what are the market shares of other popular scoring models? I am looking for an unbiased study, i.e., not conducted by FICO or by the CBs. Any pointers?
I'm not affiliated with FICO one bit (other than my $$$$ goes to them quite a bit) but if I had to take a stab, I'd say 95%+ of lenders out there use FICO scores. Totally a guess.
I'm looking to buy our first home in the next few weeks and have been diligently reading the Mortgage Loans board for the past 2 or so years. Most of the posters on there begin to post asking if they'd qualify, prior to seeing the lender. Many of those posters have updated us on their progress, especially when it comes to scores and FICO scoring. I have yet to find one example in Mortgage Loans (or any board) whereby the mortgage lender pulled any score other than a FICO score. If other scores were being used, you'd see more posts in there of "my score didn't match the lenders". Now we do have posts like that but it boiled down to a question as to which FICO version was pulled or in most cases, the poster pulled a FAKO and tried to compare it to a FICO.
Now I know that a rare few lenders do pull a score other than a FICO. FICO hosts webinars from time to time and those offer insights into FICO scoring. I recall listening to a Q&A with some mortgage lenders and one said they switched recently from FICO to a Vantage Score because Vantage stopped scoring AUs and FICO wouldn't stop. That lender was getting killed with fake credit profiles because of piggybacking.
If looking for an unbiased viewpoint, you'd probably have to go to the source and that is with mortgage lenders and/or mortgage industry folks like National Association of Realtors, Mortgage Bankers Association or the like. I'm sure they keep track on mortgage approval rates, statistics, etc and probably filter out FICO from FAKO.
