Scoring is extremely complicated.
FairIsaac (FICO) does NOT directly generate credit scores. Generating credit scores requires current credit data to run through the scoring algorithm.. Fair Isaac is not a CRA and thus does not maintain current monthly credit data.
Fair Isaac does have, with contract from the CRAs, access to prior credit data in order to generate and modify their scoring models, but this is not access by personal identifiers (name, SSN) and is not the basis for your current credit score. So don’t blame FairIsaac for credit report problems. That is not their business.
FairIsaac develops their scoring models, and sells them to the CRAs, who then run it through their databases and generate a score. That is what you get from myFICO, and since these are produced based upon the FairIsaac algorithms, they are the only ones that can be called FICO® scores.
The FICO algorithms sold to the CRAs are not identical. Each CRA has contracted with FairIsaac for its own scoring algorithm. There are also different algorithms sold to different industriies, such as mortgage and auto lendors So a FICO score is never vanilla. It only substantiates the source of the score as being FairIsaac.
But the rub is that capitalism has spawned others to also generate their own scoring algorithms that are not produced by FairIsaac. Other vendors, including the CRAs themselves in a joint venture called Vantage scores, may use different scoring algorithms to score their credit data. Many call these “FAKO scores to distinguish from FairIsaac scores. Most lendors dont use these.
The primary site that offers credit scores substantiated as being based on the general FairIsaac FICO scoring model is myFICO. But even then, it may not be the FICO model or score that you lendor uses.
So there are a myriad of both FICO and non-FICO scores on the market, and only the lendor chooses, ultimately, to decide on which product to buy and use. The vast majority of lendors use FICO scores, but you never know until you ask.
