FICO VS. VANTAGE SCORING QUESTION

Anonymous · ‎07-18-2019

Hello,

Have a question about scoring models. It seems my FICO scores appear much better than the FAKO sites that use VANTAGE. How do you know what to trust?

As of today... My FICO TRANS SCORE IS 601. My FAKO SCORE IS 538

MY FICO EXP SCORE IS 603. MY FAKO EXP SCORE IS 549

MY FICO EQ SCORE IS 605. MY FAKO EQ SCORE IS 589

WHY SO MUCH DIFFERENT?

NRB525 · ‎07-19-2019

Most card applications will use the FICO score. Vantage is used by some.

If you apply for a car loan or home mortgage it is very unlikely either of those scores will be used, but rather another score model within the FICO list of scores. There are something like 30 if you go all the way back through the list.

Best set thing to do is look at how you can increase the FICO score you can see. Vantage will improve also, but has different criteria. Ultimately the methods used to improve a score are quite similar: Pay on time always, keep utilization low, limit the number of new card apps, age the cards you have.

High Bal Jan 2009 $116k on $146k limits 80% Util.
Oct 2014 $46k on $127k 36% util EQ 722 TU 727 EX 727
April 2018 $18k on $344k 5% util EQ 806 TU 810 EX 812
Jan 2019 $7.6k on $360k EQ 832 TU 839 EX 831
March 2021 $33k on $312k EQ 796 TU 798 EX 801
May 2021 Paid all Installments and Mortgages, one new Mortgage EQ 761 TY 774 EX 777
April 2022 EQ=811 TU=807 EX=805 - TU VS 3.0 765

Anonymous · ‎07-19-2019

@Anonymous wrote:

WHY SO MUCH DIFFERENT?

Completely different scoring models, plain and simple. Think of it as 2 different ways of evaluating the same data set and assigning a score to it. I guess a couple of comparisons would be if 2 different individuals wrote a job-related review on you. Even if they both had the same points that they were looking at, each person would weigh the categories/data in different ways and thus could return a different score. Or, if you submitted an idential term paper in college to 2 different professors and they returned 2 different scores.

SouthJamaica · ‎07-19-2019

@Anonymous wrote:
Hello,
Have a question about scoring models. It seems my FICO scores appear much better than the FAKO sites that use VANTAGE. How do you know what to trust?

Trust FICO. Forget the other one.

As of today... My FICO TRANS SCORE IS 601. My FAKO SCORE IS 538
MY FICO EXP SCORE IS 603. MY FAKO EXP SCORE IS 549
MY FICO EQ SCORE IS 605. MY FAKO EQ SCORE IS 589
WHY SO MUCH DIFFERENT?

Because they have different algorithms.

By the way, there's no such thing as "a FICO score"; there are 25 or 30 different

FICO scoring models/algorithms.