FHFA announces update to new credit score rollout
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently announced updates for the transition to a bi-merge credit requirement from the traditional tri-merge of reports from all credit reporting agencies.
The update can be found here.
For years, FHFA has been moving toward this new model that requires lenders to provide credit reports from two of the three national credit reporting agencies (CRAs), as opposed to reports from all three. The agency sought feedback in March 2023 on this proposal, as well as the decision to transition from the Classic FICO credit score model to the FICO 10 T and VantageScore 4.0 models. These alternative credit scoring models are considered more accurate in determining a credit consumer’s worthiness and incorporate data previous scoring models did not, such as rental payment information.
According to the FHFA, the implementation of the bi-merge credit reporting requirement is expected to occur in the fourth quarter of 2025. To support this transition, the agency stated the Enterprises will accelerate the publication of the VantageScore 4.0 historical data. This information was expected to be published in the first quarter of 2025, but the FHFA moved up this deadline to early in the third quarter of 2024. Stakeholders identified access to this data as important in their efforts to analyze the new models and assess any changes they must make to their systems and models.
The current timeline with completed and projected implementation milestones is as follows:
This timeline and other information can be found in the Partner Playbook from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
For more information on the resources available related to the credit score model changes, go to:
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