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VantageScore and Grades | The Costs of Change | 

Credit Score Confusion, Rating Charts and VantageScore

Aside the obvious attempt to eliminate Fair Isaac, the 3 credit bureaus promise a more understandable, relatable and better to utilize scoring system.

While the classic FICO score uses a scoring system that charts the borrower anywhere between 300 to 850, the VantageScore starts at 501 and ends at 990.

What seemingly is just a range of points, breaks down to an almost elementary school type chart.

In the eyes of the VantageScore, this could be your future outlook of credit worthiness:

•     901-990 equals "A" credit
•     801-900 equals "B" credit
•     701-800 equals "C" credit
•     601-700 equals "D" credit
•     501-600 equals "F" credit

Is this really making things easier? Just because a letter grade is replacing a heat chart, depicting your risk factor between High Risk to Very Low Risk, doesn't necessarily mean that this is the end of all confusion.

The Credit Bureaus still manage to keep the borrowers in the dark about the actual calculation of the point value and subsequently associated letter grade.

The problem is data collection. Not all accounts are being reported to all credit bureaus. Your delinquency or, accurate repayment, may only be reported to one credit agency, while the other two are not having the same data. Supposedly, the Vantage score is adapted by all three bureaus, streamlining the performance of calculation.

However, just because the credit bureaus are now attempting to use the same scoring model, and that VantageScore is going to be able to look at all three databases where your information is collected, doesn't mean that this is actually the case.

So far, the accuracy of the VantageScore has yet to be proven.