Credit and Financial Counseling Program License Agreement — FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The Program License Agreement is a FICO confidential document and may not be shared with any third parties, including any Consumer Reporting Agencies, e.g., Equifax, Experian, TransUnion (CRAs) or any service providers that you may use to support your business activities. If a third party is asking to see the agreement, please find out what information the third party is seeking and reach out to FICO at ML_OpenAccessCFC@fico.com. FICO will work with you to ensure the third party has all the information needed to support you in this program.
The Scores and Content may only be shared with customers through one or more of the Program Channels listed in the Agreement. For the in writing channel, you will print out the score summary page from the FICO® Score Summary Report Generator. If you would like to disclose FICO® Scores through an online channel, you will need to develop score display pages, and FICO can support you through this process. Online must be in a secure online environment and requires additional authentication to ensure the person logging in to view the Scores is the person to whom the Scores pertain. Please contact FICO at ML_OpenAccessCFC@fico.com with any questions about displaying Scores to your customers.
Authentication is the process of determining whether someone is who they are declared to be. Your organization is required to “authenticate” the identity of a consumer to verify that the consumer to whom a FICO® Score is disclosed is the same as the consumer to whom that FICO® Score relates.
FICO® Scores are FICO’s Intellectual Property. This restriction applies to many things, including preventing attempts to try to determine the underlying mathematical algorithms used to calculate FICO® Scores. You are also not allowed to distribute the FICO® Scores or Content (other than at no charge to your approved customers as part of the Program under the Program License Agreement), including, for example, selling Scores to your customers or any other third parties. You are also not allowed to store or aggregate the FICO® Scores to conduct research or analysis except to the extent necessary to provide reporting under the Agreement or to share a FICO® Score (that is not more than one year old) previously disclosed under the Program for the purposes of historical comparison of such FICO® Scores with an Approved Customer under the Program.
This restriction prevents you from receiving any additional fees or compensation in connection with providing access to the Scores or Content associated with this program. FICO is giving you the ability to share the Scores and Content with your customers for no additional fee and we require that you share the Scores and Content with your customers at no additional fee.
FICO® Score Open Access is intended to be a pure educational program free of marketing and promotion of other products, services and content. As such, you may not disclose any Scores or Content in connection with any third party products, services, or content, such as identity theft insurance or monitoring products or services, for example. If in doubt, please contact FICO at ML_OpenAccessCFC@fico.com for review of your particular scenario.
FICO created the FICO® Score Open Access program to help reduce consumer confusion about credit scores and help consumers understand the difference between FICO® Scores, which are used in 90% of lending decisions1, and “educational scores” that are not used in lending decisions. To that end, we do not permit you to disclose any other scores to consumers as a part of this Program or in connection with any other free credit program or similar program.
FICO supports the use of the FICO brand and approved Content for messaging to your customers. For acquisition marketing, i.e., marketing designed to attract new customers, use of the FICO brand is limited to listing free availability of FICO® Scores as a non-lead feature. In other words, the FICO® Score benefit may be included on your website, in an acquisition marketing email or flyer, for example, within a list of features offered through your product, but may not be the lead feature or sole benefit being communicated.
Use of FICO brand or marks cannot be used to target customers of FICO websites with your marketing. For example, you are not permitted to market your FICO® Score benefit on twitter using #myfico, as this would be directly targeting FICO’s customers who follow myfico and may be purchasing FICO® Scores through our myfico.com website. Similarly, you may not use FICO brand or marks to bid on any internet search keywords as part of your online marketing efforts.
Not necessarily. “Fee-Based Product” means a program or product, for which a fee or other compensation is charged or otherwise received, other than a standard membership fee or similar fee charged only for enrollment into Client’s proprietary product, service or program and not charged for any particular feature, such as for access to a Score. For example, if you are offering an identity theft product for a fee to your customers, that would be considered a Fee-Based Product and you are not permitted to promote or serve ads for those products in connection with the Open Access Program or use any Content from this program or FICO marks to market or advertise that Fee-Based Product.
If you intend to switch consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) during the term of the agreement, please notify FICO at ML_OpenAccessCFC@fico.com. FICO may need to notify the CRA of the change in advance of your switching FICO® Score providers. You will also need to be aware of some differences in requirements between the CRAs before changing CRAs.
Once signed, the agreement will be in effect for one year and will automatically renew for one year periods unless either FICO or your organization terminates with at least 120 days prior written notice.
At a high level, this program is only open to Qualified Credit and Financial Counseling (C&FC) Providers who comply with the terms of the Agreement. As such, by signing this Agreement, you attest that you are a Qualified C&FC Provider. Additionally, you are responsible for entering into and purchasing FICO® Scores under an End User Agreement with a consumer reporting agency (or authorized reseller in the case of Equifax or TransUnion) for the initial use, i.e., financial counseling and/or financial educational services. You are also responsible for compliance with applicable law and must provide to FICO information necessary to confirm that you are a Qualified C&FC Provider (e.g., verification of 501(c)(3) status).
An example of obtaining a consumer’s written is to present the consumer with an authorization form that references the purpose for which you intend to obtain the score and that the consumer is authorizing it. The consumer signs the authorization providing written permission.
Any customer-facing materials that you produce related to this program must be submitted for FICO review beyond the FICO-provided materials (e.g., FICO® Score display pages, FAQ pages, banner ads, email campaigns, direct mail letters introducing the benefit) prior to making them publicly available. This helps to ensure that the information communicated to your customers is accurate and consistent with FICO content.
The agreement references both Fair Isaac’s Branding Guidelines and Trademark Usage Requirements. The Branding Guidelines are relevant if you do not plan to use the FICO® Score Summary Report Generator tool and instead build your own score display pages. Please contact FICO at ML_OpenAccessCFC@fico.com if that is your intention, and we will provide all required support materials at that time. The Trademark Usage Requirements are at http://www.fico.com/en/trademark-requirements/.
If your organization has a Learning Management System, FICO licenses the eLearning course content to your organization and delivers the course via a SCORM 2004-compliant package at no charge. In the event that your organization does not have a Learning Management System or it is not compatible with a SCORM package, FICO offers our eLearning course via a hosted client learning portal for a fee. An annual license fee per learner provides unlimited access to the course for the duration of the contract year, putting information at learners’ fingertips when they need it. Please contact FICO at ML_OpenAccessCFC@fico.com to get detailed cost information.