You can get a true Experian fico score for free

[Anonymous]

Experian's Fair, Isaac NextGen Advanced risk model 2.0 is available for free to Alliant credit union members. Equifax currently offers the product under the trade name Pinnacle(SM), and TransUnion offers the product under the trade name PRECISION(SM). This is a true fico score.

These are the current "classic" models used as defined by FICO:

FICO scores have different names at each of the credit reporting agencies. All of these scores, however, are developed using the same methods by Fair Isaac, and have been rigorously tested to ensure they provide the most accurate picture of credit risk possible using credit report data.

Credit Reporting Agency               FICO Score

Equifax                                          BEACON® Score

Experian                                        Experian/Fair Isaac Risk Model

TransUnion                                    EMPIRICA®

So it appears that the once available model from Experian offered through myfico was the risk model 1.0 and the model offered by Alliant is the 2.0 version.

The Alliant faq contradicts itself by saying this isn't a fico score, this is not true, it is not the "classic" fico score you have been able to get in the past but it is a true fico score. 

[smallfry]

Do I want to take an EQ hit for an Experian score?

[MattH]

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@smallfry wrote:
Do I want to take an EQ hit for an Experian score?

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According to their web site the APR on their VISA card could be "as low as 8.49%," which I do not consider particularly low -- as of my 5/13/2009 statement the purchase APR on my Chase VISA card is 5.24% (which I don't pay since I always pay the full balance).

[haulingthescoreup]

It's a true FICO score, but as a NextGen score, it probably won't match your classic EX FICO score (as if we'd ever know.)

Nice to have, I guess, especially to track changes, but those of us who were around when WaMu offered the credit-card enhanced TU FICO scores, and who remember the endless confusion over score variances between it and the classic TU, are bracing ourselves.

[Anonymous]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:
It's a true FICO score, but as a NextGen score, it probably won't match your classic EX FICO score (as if we'd ever know.)

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I think it's safe to say it will definitely not match the classic EX fico since the NextGen score has a range from 150-950.

I would definitely not join Alliant solely for this score. It is only offered quarterly and may as well be a fako score if nobody uses it for credit decisions.

Message Edited by hobojon on 05-30-2009 09:26 AM

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Experian's Fair, Isaac NextGen Advanced risk model 2.0 is available for free to Alliant credit union members. Equifax currently offers the product under the trade name Pinnacle(SM), and TransUnion offers the product under the trade name PRECISION(SM). This is a true fico score.

These are the current "classic" models used as defined by FICO:

FICO scores have different names at each of the credit reporting agencies. All of these scores, however, are developed using the same methods by Fair Isaac, and have been rigorously tested to ensure they provide the most accurate picture of credit risk possible using credit report data.

Credit Reporting Agency               FICO Score

Equifax                                          BEACON® Score

Experian                                        Experian/Fair Isaac Risk Model

TransUnion                                    EMPIRICA®

So it appears that the once available model from Experian offered through myfico was the risk model 1.0 and the model offered by Alliant is the 2.0 version.

The Alliant faq contradicts itself by saying this isn't a fico score, this is not true, it is not the "classic" fico score you have been able to get in the past but it is a true fico score. 

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How can this be a FICO score when it goes to 950?  I wasn't aware that FICO used any model that was not an 850 model.

[Anonymous]

Classic Fico scores use the 300-850 scale. NextGen Fico scores are 100-950 and according to Fico are more predictive. http://www.fairisaac.com/NR/rdonlyres/917B3D1F-07FB-427A-B93A-5CD7854CC77C/0/FICO_Next_Gen_1462PS_EN...

"we've calibrated the models to the same odds-to-score relationship observed with the classic risk scores"

If this is true you should be able to easily convert the NextGen score to a classic score range number. I'm not saying you'll end up with a reliable number though.

[haulingthescoreup]

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txjohn wrote:

How can this be a FICO score when it goes to 950?  I wasn't aware that FICO used any model that was not an 850 model.

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NextGen scores pretty much sank without trace. So yes, it's a FICO score, but no, your lender probably won't be using it.

I wonder if this is similar to your brother's mortgage pull scores not matching classic FICO scores?

[MattH]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Classic Fico scores use the 300-850 scale. NextGen Fico scores are 100-950 and according to Fico are more predictive. http://www.fairisaac.com/NR/rdonlyres/917B3D1F-07FB-427A-B93A-5CD7854CC77C/0/FICO_Next_Gen_1462PS_EN.pdf

"we've calibrated the models to the same odds-to-score relationship observed with the classic risk scores"

If this is true you should be able to easily convert the NextGen score to a classic score range number. I'm not saying you'll end up with a reliable number though.

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Fair Isaac claims their NextGen model is a substantially better predictor of default risk than is the classic FICO score; if I were a major lender I would probably want to test such claims by purchasing both classic and NG scores on a sample of customers then watch what happens.  At any rate, clearly NG is a different scoring model.  Remember there are basically two reasons why anybody would purchase a credit score:

1. If I am a lender, landlord, employer, or whatever, then I want to assess the risk that an individual will get into financial difficulty as an aid to making some sort of decision about that person.  These people presumably care about how accurately the score they buy predicts a consumer's credit risk.
2. If I am a consumer buying my own score, then I want to know how decision makers will see me.  So it does not actually matter to me how well my FICO or other credit score predicts what the lender cares about, what matters to me is how close the score I am buying comes to whatever score the decision maker uses.

Here's the thing: NG scores are presumably optimized for predicting credit risk because that's what Fair Isaac's core customers (lenders) care about.  They are hardly gonna be optimized for predicting FICO Classic scores!  Suppose NG scores were utterly perfect predictors of credit risk (which of course they cannot be).  Well, even if NG scores were perfect credit predictors, they could still hardly be perfectly-correlated with FICO Classic scores because FICO Classic scores are not perfectly-correlated with credit risk.  And since in reality there must of course be some error in FICO NG scores as credit predictors, their correlation with FICO Classic scores will be even less perfect.  The error in using FICO NG score to estimate FICO Classic score will have two components: the error of FICO NG score as a predictor of credit risk and the error of FICO Classic scores as a predictor of credit risk.

I have no doubt that from the perspective of a lender FICO NG scores are at least as good as FICO Classic scores, and may well turn out to be better.  Lenders will of course want to test the claims made by FICO about their NG scores before considering a switch, so any switch will take time.  But for the present when few lenders are using NG scores to make decisions, from the perspective of a consumer a FICO NG score is little better than a FAKO score.

[tvholic]

You can convert a NextGen score ( "n" ) to a FICO range score using the formula:

850 - ((950 - n) / 1.454)

My Alliant score came out within two points of my most recent Experian FICO.