By Nate Wolf
Less than a week after Fair Isaac moved to bypass the three nationwide credit bureaus and distribute FICO scores directly to mortgage lenders, Equifax struck back.
Equifax announced that it would make the VantageScore 4.0 -- an alternative to the FICO score -- available for $4.50 a score over the next two years. That compares to FICO's new models of either $10 a score or $4.95 plus $33 for each completed loan. The company also will provide VantageScore for free to all Equifax customers who purchase FICO scores in 2025 and 2026.
"The company is responding to FICO's monopoly-like doubling of their mortgage credit score prices to $10 in 2026," Equifax said in a press release.
Fair Isaac stock was down 3.6% in premarket trading following the announcement. Equifax rose 2.6%, while fellow credit bureaus TransUnion and Experian gained 1.1% and 2.2%, respectively. VantageScore is a joint venture of all three bureaus.
The move is an obvious attempt to get resellers -- Wall Street's name for brokers and others who buy and sell mortgages -- to switch to VantageScore and reclaim some of the markup lost by FICO's new direct license approach.
VantageScore adoption had been muted before the announcement. Analysts at BMO Capital Markets estimate that FICO maintains a mid-to-high 90% market share. Given the free bundles and more than 50% discount Equifax is providing, the next two years should test just how strong FICO's grip on the credit-scoring space is.
Fair Isaac's stock reaction shows some "market jitters about this announcement potentially catalyzing some switching to VantageScore 4.0," wrote BMO's Ryan Griffin and Jeffrey M. Silber.
But markets appeared unsure whether Equifax's counterattack is a true game-changer. Fair Isaac stock remains up 20% since its pricing announcement last Thursday, while Equifax remains down 3.8%.
Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com
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October 08, 2025 07:56 ET (11:56 GMT)
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