Credit Data and Scoring

Chapter Fifteen

Credit scores on the same borrower differ between CRAs

Abstract

This chapter extends the idea of comparing borrowers at the different credit reporting agencies (CRAs), at the same moment, to FICO scores. It turns out that a common version of the FICO score differs quite a bit between scores, in part because of data differences but also because of the arbitrariness inherent in models that become credit scores. The gap between the highest and the lowest scores is greater than 50 points nearly a quarter of the time, and several percent of the time, it is greater than 100 points. The gap is larger when the average or median score between CRAs is low.

Keywords

APR; CRA; Credit score; Credit score differences; Eligibility; ...