Credit Score Ratings

Your credit score is the single most important number in your financial life! There are many credit score ratings in use. You’ve probably heard some of these names: Fico, Vantage, TransRisk, Empirica, Beacon and many others.

A credit score can be seen as a grade for how you behave financially. The better you handle your debts, the better your score (grade) is, and vise-versa. If you have a good credit score, lenders will want to lend you money and will offer you better terms.

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Different credit score ratings use different scales. Below is a graphic illustration of the two most commonly known credit scores: Fico and Vantage.

FICO was developed in the 50’s by the Fair Isaac Company. Since then it evolved, and currently has many variations, all of which run on the same scale, 300 – 850.

Vantage credit score is a new credit score rating, introduced on 2006 by the 3 major credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian & TransUnion. It claims to benefit with consumers, because it (supposedly) deals better with people that has “thin” credit files (over 40 million American!). For now, the Vantage score hasn’t caught up yet with creditors. It runs on a completely different scale, 501-990.

Here is a graphic illustration of the Fico & Vantage credit score ratings scale:

Fico Score Range versus Vantage Score Range

Other Credit Score Ratings
Each of the three major credit bureaus has its own proprietary version of Fico. You may have recognized a few by their name: Empirica, Beacon, Pinnacle, Score power & Precision are just an example.

Most of these scores run on the same scale as Fico (300-850), although some have a slightly different scale. For more information about the differences between the different scores see Credit Score Range.