Which Scoring is Used?

[Anonymous]

I am trying to apply for a loan through Wells Fargo.  I have been told that what they get is a little different than what I see in my credit report.  So am I wrong to think that using this website is not helping me out in monitoring my score because they are pulling from somewhere?  I thought FICO was thee website?  Please help me understand!  Thanks!

[AndySoCal]

Wells Fargo will use FICO scores yes but they may have their own scoring matrix in addition to these scores. Currenly only Trans Union and Equifax allow FICO score to be sold to consumers. Experian used to but decided to stop selling it a couple years back.

[Anonymous]

We just applied for a mortgage loan and our lender pulled a "trimerge" report through FA Credco. Basically, Credco pulled the info from all three credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) , found the stuff the lender was most interested in, condensed it and provided a  single report to the lender; all three credit scores were included as well and the lender used the middle score to determine our rate.

[cashnocredit]

What WF gets from the CRAs is substantially the same as what you get, minus soft inqs, if you order the report from the cra. MyFICO reports are formatted differently and include all info that goes into a FICO but not inqs between 1 and 2 years old. WF would get those but probably doesn't pay much attention to them since they are old enough not to matter and don't affect FICO scores at all.

[Booner72]

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@Anonymous wrote:

We just applied for a mortgage loan and our lender pulled a "trimerge" report through FA Credco. Basically, Credco pulled the info from all three credit reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) , found the stuff the lender was most interested in, condensed it and provided a  single report to the lender; all three credit scores were included as well and the lender used the middle score to determine our rate.

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A trimerge report puts together all the information from all three reports.  They don't differentiate the information - it all shows up, it just presents differently than having three different reports.  My mortgage lender used CREDCO reports when I bought my house, and when i was buying a car, another CREDCO report was also pulled by the car dealership.  But for the auto, they used an "auto enhanced" FICO score which was different than the scores my lender used for the house, which were FICO scores (TU O4, EQUFAX Beacon 5.0 ((What you get here)) and Experien FICO.

Basically, scores different based on what scoring model that particular lender wants, but the info is the exact same as you see on a report you pull, or what any lender would pull.  

Hope that makes sense.  It's pretty confusing at first.

[RobertEG]

It is a common misconception that FICO is one scoring algorithm, when in fact it is dozens.

FICO vends various custom flavors of its scoring algorithms to various customers based on their own business needs.  They vend different algorithms to mortgage and auto lendors, for example.  Similarly, each CRA, even if you order a true FICO score from them, has licensed different versions of the FICO algoriths.

Even the standard commercial scores sold to consumers are based on different algorithms dependent upon the consumer's individual credit history.  Before doing the actual number crunching, you are first put into a scoring category, commonly referred to on this site as a scoring "bucket," and each has its own algorithm.  As your credit history changes, so can your scoring "bucket," causing unexpected changes in score as you are shifted to a new scoring algorithm.