VantageScore Use In Mortgage Originations Up, Though Use By GSEs Falls

More lenders are checking borrowers’ credit with credit scoring company VantageScore, which was developed by Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax, the three major credit bureaus. 

VantageScore reported that use of its creditworthiness-checking service spiked last year to nearly 42 billion scores, with a 55% overall increase year-over-year for 2024, according to an analysis by Charles River Associates. 

The annual third-party analysis measures credit score utilization across lending segments — mortgage providers, automotive finance, credit card issuers, banks, credit unions, and others — in the consumer credit scoring industry. 

Silvio Tavares, the company’s president and CEO, pointed to the usage growth as validation of VantageScore’s “predictive power and innovation." Some 41.7 billion VantageScore credit scores were used in 2024, up from 26.9 billion in 2023. That increase “significantly outpaced” overall credit usage growth in the United States for 2024, the company noted. 

Mixed Bag In Mortgage

For use in mortgage last year, however, it was a mixed bag for VantageScore. 

VantageScore use in mortgage originations surged 166% in 2024, according to the company, but that growth was more than offset by non-recurring declines in use by government-sponsored entities (GSEs) after a large spike in 2023 usage related to mortgage portfolio analyses. 

“GSEs performed extensive analyses of large mortgage portfolios in 2023, but those uses did not repeat in 2024, resulting in an overall decline in VantageScore mortgage use of 42%,” VantageScore stated.  

Even so, the company emphasized, mortgage analyses in 2023 resulted in acceptance of VantageScore for use by mortgage GSEs and government agencies in 2024, including the Veterans Administration and the Federal Home Loan Banks of New York, Chicago, Dallas, Cincinnati, and San Francisco.