FICO competitor steps up with new improvement

March 12, 2013

The long-simmering battle between FICO and VantageScore heated up a bit this week as VantageScore announced its latest scoring model and FICO announced a partnership with FactorTrust.

VantageScore is the seven-year-old organization jointly founded by the three national credit reporting bureaus to develop an alternative to FICO, for which they need to pay a licensing fee.

Vantage has rolled out two previous versions of its scoring system since its founding in 2006 and the third, dubbed VantageScore 3.0 provides the ability to score between 27 million and 30 million additional consumers who had been considered previously “unscoreable,” often because they lacked conventional credit histories, that company said.

“The VantageScore 3.0 model is both a new model, and new path forward for VantageScore Solutions and the credit scoring industry. The model was built with a lender’s implementation and risk management needs in mind, in conjunction with a deeper understanding for what information consumers need to become better managers of their own credit,” said Barrett Burns, CEO of VantageScore Solutions, in a prepared statement about the new scoring model…

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