What is a FICO score? | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2024)

FAQs

What is a FICO score? | Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? ›

A FICO® score is a particular brand of credit score. A credit score is a number that is used to predict how likely you are to pay back a loan on time. Credit scores are used by companies to make decisions such as whether to offer you a mortgage or a credit card.

What is a FICO^® Score? A FICO Score is a three-digit number based on the information in your credit reports. It helps lenders determine how likely you are to repay a loan. This, in turn, affects how much you can borrow, how many months you have to repay, and how much it will cost (the interest rate).

A credit score is a prediction of your credit behavior, such as how likely you are to pay a loan back on time, based on information from your credit reports.

To receive a FICO Score, you must have a credit account at least 6 months old and activity during the past 6 months. FICO breaks its scoring criteria down into 5 categories: Payment history: 35% Amounts owed: 30%

Key Takeaways. A credit score is a three-digit number that measures your financial health and how well you manage credit and debt. FICO scores are a specific type of score that lenders can use when making borrowing decisions. The FICO credit scoring system is the most widely used credit score.

“A high credit score means that you will most likely qualify for the lowest interest rates and fees for new loans and lines of credit,” McClary says. And if you're applying for a mortgage, you could save upwards of 1% in interest.

If your bank, credit card issuer, auto lender or mortgage servicer participates in FICO ^® Score Open Access, you can see your FICO ^® Scores, along with the top factors affecting your scores, for free.

The CFPB helps ensure the financial market is a level playing field by cracking down on bad financial actors that engage in unfair, deceptive, abusive, and discriminatory practices that harm consumers.

The CFPB supervises a range of companies to assess their compliance with federal consumer financial laws. We have supervisory authority over banks, thrifts, and credit unions with assets over $10 billion, as well as their affiliates.

The main categories considered are a person's payment history (35%), amounts owed (30%), length of credit history (15%), new credit accounts (10%), and types of credit used (10%). FICO scores are available from each of the three major credit bureaus, based on information contained in consumers' credit reports.

How to raise fico score quickly? ›

FICO 8 scores range between 300 and 850. A FICO score of at least 700 is considered a good score. There are also industry-specific versions of credit scores that businesses use. For example, the FICO Bankcard Score 8 is the most widely used score when you apply for a new credit card or a credit-limit increase.

The first place you should check for your free FICO Score is with your credit card issuer. Many card issuers provide their cardholders with free access to their credit score. While there's a good chance you'll have access to your credit score, the key is whether it's your FICO Score or VantageScore.

You'll typically need a credit score of 620 to finance a home purchase. However, some lenders may offer mortgage loans to borrowers with scores as low as 500. Whether you qualify for a specific loan type also depends on personal factors like your debt-to-income ratio (DTI), loan-to-value ratio (LTV) and income.

The two big credit scoring models used by auto lenders are FICO® Auto Score and Vantage. We're going to take at look at FICO® since it has long been the auto industry standard.

Experian's advantage over FICO is that the information it provides is far more detailed and thorough than a simple number. A pair of borrowers could both have 700 FICO Scores but vastly different credit histories.

Why is my FICO score higher than my other credit scores? Every credit-scoring model is different. And credit scores can change based on what credit report is used to inform the model. Those variances can make some scores higher or lower than others.

You can borrow from $1,000 to $100,000 or more with a 700 credit score. The exact amount of money you will get depends on other factors besides your credit score, such as your income, your employment status, the type of loan you get, and even the lender.

A FICO^® Score of 670 falls within a span of scores, from 670 to 739, that are categorized as Good.