New Joint Credit Score for Sale to Consumers; Lenders Slow to Adapt

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Experian is among the first of the crediting agencies to offer their jointly developed credit score, called VantageScores, to consumers.

The problem, though, is with lenders: they’re a slow-to-adapt lot, and consumers won’t get much benefit from knowing their VantageScores if lenders aren’t going to use them to make credit decisions.

Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, began offering the Vantage scoring system to lenders in March. Experian says hundreds of lenders are testing it, but none has begun using it exclusively to make credit decisions. And while Experian is offering the VantageScores to consumers for $5.95 – that’s $5.95 worth of nothing if lenders aren’t utilizing that information.