Is there a difference between US and Canadian FICO scores?

[Anonymous]

I read that FICO scores go up to 850 but when I checked with EQ in Canada they said the FICO score goes up to 900.  Is there any difference between the calculations based on the country?  And if so, does a 785 score in Canada = a lower score in the US?  Just curious - let's see how the brain trust in this forum can answer this.

[RobertEG]

Fair Isaac does vend a credit scoring algorithm that uses 900 as the max.

[Anonymous]

"Fair Isaac does vend a credit scoring algorithm that uses 900 as the max."

I don't understand your statement - especially "does vend". 

Why the difference in scoring?  I thought the score only went to 399-850 but mine reads 300-900 range.  Does a 768 mean the same thing on both scoring systems.

[haulingthescoreup]

There are the so-called "classic" FICO scoring formulas for EQ, TU, and EX that we get here. Well, not EX any more, but you know what I mean. These are the formulas used by mortgage lenders.

There are also "industry-enhanced" FICO scores, one set tweaked for the credit card industry and another for the auto loan industry. These have a different score range. Back when WaMu was alive, they had some CC's that reported the credit-card-enhanced TU FICO score, with a 900 limit. This caused enormous hoo-hah around here when members were arguing about what their TU score was, because some were talking about the classic score and others about the CC-enhanced score. This score was originally offered on Providian cards, which were bought by WaMu, which is why you'll see them called PFICO's, P for Providian.

FICO also devised the so-called NextGen scores, which Alliant FCU is now apparently giving to its members as an ongoing FYI, even though they pull classic EQ (Beacon 5.0) scores.

There are also some lesser-known scores, I think, that probably sank without trace.

The Canadian scores, AFAIK, are derived from different formulas from the US versions. Canadian credit history does not transfer to the US, and vice versa.


eta to add NextGen, which I always forget about.

Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 07-25-2009 04:06 PM

[Anonymous]

"Canadian credit history does not transfer to the US, and vice versa."

Yeah, that's one thing I presumed.  When my brother moved to Colorado, getting a mortgage was a bit more interesting because of course they had no US credit history.  I would guess that they paid a higher interest rate because of that.

I guess my biggest question was does the same score translate across as meaning the same?  In my particular case a 768 TU rates as a 57% percentile and my 785 EQ rates as a 63% percentile.  From what I've read on the forum a 692 EQ = 64% percentile in the US. 

So a couple theories occurred to me: either the scores are quite a bit different in their calculations and a 785 CDN ~ 692 US which is a considerable difference OR the average US consumer credit history is lower or worse than the average Canadian consumer credit OR a combination of the two. I thought that part of the clue to the difference would be in the max. score (900 vs 850) but I need to have more information to understand what the true differences are.

I knew about the differences between standard FICO and the auto industry I heard about but the other types of FICO scores are just news to me and just add to my confusion.

[haulingthescoreup]

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RG-09 wrote:

...I knew about the differences between standard FICO and the auto industry I heard about but the other types of FICO scores are just news to me and just add to my confusion.

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lol, sometimes I think that might be their purpose.

My guess is that there is no correspondence between or conversion factor for Canadian and US FICO scores. The formulas are probably entirely different in their weighting of elements in one's credit history. Whether this is because Canadians are more (or less) responsible with personal credit, or because of some completely unrelated factors, I don't know. The best parallel would be the endless question about which FAKO score mirrors FICO's the best. The answer is, none of them, because they result from completely different scoring formulas.

I hasten to add that I'm certainly not saying that the Canadian FICO's are FAKO's, because they're not. They just get crunched through a different black box than do US FICO's. We have (or think we have) a fair amount of knowledge about the US formula, but here on the forums, there's none about the Canadian versions.