By Nate Wolf

Shares of Fair Isaac, the provider of the FICO score, plunged for a third straight day on Wednesday as the company vies to protect its market share against the three major credit bureaus.

Experian and TransUnion this week lowered the price for their VantageScore 4.0 mortgage origination scores to 99 cents apiece, while Equifax cut its price to $1 flat. VantageScore is an independently managed joint venture between the three reporting agencies, which have positioned the metric as an alternative to the FICO score.

VantageScore had previously cost $4 through TransUnion and $4.50 through Equifax. Experian was trialing a free pricing model and vowed to have at least a 50% discount relative to the FICO score.

Shares of Fair Isaac fell 10% to $1,154.65, adding to an 11% drop on Tuesday and a 2.4% decline the day before. The stock was the worst performer in the S&P 500 on Wednesday.

VantageScore's move undercuts the FICO score, which costs mortgage lenders $10 through the credit bureaus and $4.95 through Fair Isaac's direct license program. Fair Isaac introduced the direct license program in October to allow score resellers -- brokers and others who buy and sell mortgages -- to bypass the credit bureaus.

Fair Isaac didn't immediately respond to Barron's request for comment.

Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion will likely cap their own near-term revenues by lowering prices, said Stifel analyst Shlomo H. Rosenbaum in a research note. But the tactic could be a way to gain market share in a credit-scoring business that FICO has long dominated.

"We expect the significant pricing differential to drive VantageScore adoption in the mortgage market and eventually further expand VantageScore in the other parts of the lending ecosystem," Rosenbaum wrote. That presents Fair Isaac with an unenviable choice of either lowering its own prices or losing market share, Rosenbaum added.

Federal scrutiny of housing affordability has added fuel to the price war, though the scores represent a fraction of overall home costs. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, whose director Bill Pulte has criticized Fair Isaac's pricing, announced last July that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would allow mortgage lenders to use the VantageScore 4.0 model.

The credit bureaus' close coordination of their pricing announcements "suggests that there is a concerted effort to satisfy the government's desire to lower the cost of mortgage processing and to have real pricing competition around the credit scores," Rosenbaum said.

All three companies mentioned the FHFA's push to increase scoring competition and housing affordability.

Write to Nate Wolf at nate.wolf@barrons.com

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March 11, 2026 16:28 ET (20:28 GMT)

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