Consumers, it seems, sometimes have a love-hate relationship with credit scores. On the one hand, they love high credit scores and are often fanatical about doing what’s necessary to increase them. But on the other hand, they’re often not so happy about the influence credit scores have over their lives. Which is the main driver causing people to regularly monitor and work to improve their scores.
But while we may think of a credit score as something singular, that’s hardly the case. In fact, there are many different credit scores.
The most official is the FICO® Score, which is something of the official set of credit scores used by lenders. There are even several different FICO® Scores, which is another fact generally unknown to most consumers. And to complicate the picture, there are other credit scores, best described as educational scores. Those are the scores typically available through free credit scoring services. The fact that they’re not used by lenders is the major reason why they’re free.
So, let’s take on this FICO® Score vs. credit score topic, and give you some idea how diverse the credit score universe really is. In point of fact, there are many different credit scores, but they all have the same purpose–to give consumers and lenders an accurate snapshot of personal credit profiles.
