STAMFORD, Conn., May 13, 2013 – VantageScore Solutions, LLC, the company behind the VantageScore® credit scoring model, and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), a nonprofit association of nearly 300 consumer groups founded in 1968 to advance consumer interests through research, advocacy, and education, announced today the results of a third-annual survey that measured consumer knowledge of credit scoring.
The 18-question survey was administered by Opinion Research Corp. (ORC) to more than 1,000 representative American consumers. The survey follows two similar studies which VantageScore Solutions and CFA commissioned ORC to administer in 2011 and 2012.
The results show large percentages of consumers incorrectly answered wide-ranging questions about credit scores and their impact. For example, many survey respondents do not know that credit card issuers (38%) and mortgage lenders (40%) use credit scores in decisions about credit availability and pricing. Two-fifths incorrectly believe that personal characteristics such as age (43%) and marital status (40%) are used in calculating credit scores.