FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program
The first step to reduce costs for the FICO® Score in mortgage.
FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program
Thank you for your interest in our FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program. Under this program, tri-merge resellers have the option to calculate and distribute FICO® Scores directly to their customers, eliminating reliance on the three nationwide credit bureaus. This shift will drive price transparency and immediate cost savings to mortgage lenders, mortgage brokers, and other industry participants. Firms that favor working through the credit bureaus can continue to do so.
To increase choice and optionality for industry participants, FICO is introducing two alternate pricing models. FICO’s new performance model is built on successful mortgage funding and reflects the FICO® Score’s critical role in enabling mortgage liquidity and reducing lender costs. Under the new performance model, the royalty fee for the FICO Score will be $4.95 per score, which represents a 50% reduction in average per score fees into the tri-merge resellers, a reduction achieved by eliminating credit bureau mark-ups. A funded loan fee of $33 per borrower per score will apply when a FICO-scored loan is closed, recognizing the FICO Score’s downstream utility for mortgage insurers, GSEs, investors, rating agencies, and other market participants. The funded loan fee replaces fees previously charged for re-issue of FICO Scores, enabling broad use by participants in the originating market.
Alternatively, lenders may opt to continue using the current per score only pricing model, which maintains a $10 per score fee into the tri-merge resellers, the average price previously charged by the credit bureaus for the FICO® Score. This model is designed to represent no increase in per score fees for lenders.
The FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program empowers tri-merge resellers to optimize credit costs for both lenders and borrowers. By streamlining distribution, the direct license program enhances cost transparency and reduces the price of FICO® Scores to the mortgage industry.
***Note: FICO is an independent analytics company. We grant a direct FICO® Score license for FICO Scores calculated and delivered through participating tri-merge resellers, without score mark-ups by the three nationwide credit bureaus for your use of the FICO Score for mortgage. But, we both are dependent on the credit bureaus to provide credit report data for the tri-merge resellers to process the FICO Score (if you have the credit report data broken out on your pricing schedules and invoices, it may provide visibility to the anticipated cost for the credit report data). With our mortgage direct license program, you will need to continue contracting with your tri-merge reseller(s) for the FICO Score, the credit report, and the processing of both. Under our new performance model, the per score price you currently pay for the FICO Score will decline considerably without the mark-ups from the credit bureaus.***
FICO is pleased to provide this mortgage direct license program at a critical moment for the industry. With this new program, FICO will remain the value-for-the-price leader. In fact, this program adds best-on-price structure to a long list of bests: best on predictiveness, best on fairness, best on capital requirements, best on prepayments, and best on mortgage insurer and investor execution, helping to drive the lowest mortgage price to American consumers.
Under our mortgage direct license program, you will not only get the best, most predictive and reliable score in the marketplace, you can benefit from lower FICO® Score transaction pricing per score sold into your tri-merge reseller: up to an estimated 50% or $5 lower depending on your selected pricing option. With our mortgage direct license program, we are cutting out the middlemen to bring you lower prices for the best credit risk score in the marketplace.
In addition to being better in prepayments, Classic FICO was shown in a recent white paper by FICO data scientists to likely beat our competitor’s score on predictiveness, after adjusting for a statistical measurement anomaly. And FICO® Score 10 T’s improvement over Classic FICO is 5 times greater than our competitor’s.
FICO’s better predictiveness drives more funded loans and beats the looser scoring criteria of our competitor. The vast majority of any additional applications created by using our competitor’s score will be under the cutoff or not result in more funded loans. Simply lowering minimum scoring criteria is not a reliable approach to financial inclusion and driving more mortgage loan volume. At the same time, research shows that FICO® Score 10 T’s better predictiveness can qualify 5% more borrowers above the traditional GSE cut-off.
We strongly encourage you to conduct fair lending testing. Both Classic FICO and FICO® Score 10T achieve superior predictiveness without the use of mortgage-specific variables. Our competitor includes these mortgage specific variables in its score. With the wide disparity in homeownership by race in the United States, with Classic FICO or FICO Score 10T you won’t be penalizing renters, including disadvantaged groups, solely because they don’t own a home. Conversely, with our competitor’s score you will be penalizing renters and disadvantaged groups simply because they haven’t yet had a chance to own a home. That’s not fair.
FICO doesn’t trap millions of disadvantaged potential borrowers, many who have experienced financial distress, in artificially low scores that could preclude them from benefiting from alternative options for getting an approved loan, including manual processes at the GSEs. A definitive low score from our competitor – disproportionately impacting disadvantaged groups – can deprive applicants of these other options.
The FICO® Score has long been recognized as the leading credit score. We earned that trust: We don’t chase scorability at the expense of reliability and high standards in scoring criteria. And we don’t make discretionary changes to our model after validation to curry favor with media and other groups. (See our competitor’s change to its model – after its score was validated by the GSEs – eliminating all medical collections data and the predictive value from its model.) After you validate and deploy your FICO Score in mission critical systems, you can trust that it will be the same score 20 years from now.
Capital requirements are likely to be higher for those retaining mortgage risk using our competitor. Classic FICO existed before, during, and after the Great Recession—it is the only score proven through a stressed environment. Capital requirement factors and adverse stress scenario factors for lenders, mortgage insurers, the GSEs, investors and others who retain mortgage risk have been built on the performance of Classic FICO through the Great Recession. Rating agency enhancement requirements are likewise built on Classic FICO performance. We have new data and an upcoming presentation that shows our competitor’s very different score design, including variable selection and weighting, will lead to significantly different performance at each narrow score range under an adverse stress scenario compared to Classic FICO. To offset this new, unknown (and unknowable) risk more capital will likely be required of mortgage risk holders using our competitor’s score.
Frequently Asked Questions
To increase choice and optionality for industry participants, FICO is introducing two alternate pricing models. FICO’s new performance model is built on successful mortgage funding and reflects the FICO® Score’s critical role in enabling mortgage liquidity and reducing lender costs. Under the new performance model, the royalty fee for the FICO Score will be $4.95 per score, which represents a 50% reduction in average per score fees into the tri-merge resellers, a reduction achieved by eliminating credit bureau mark-ups.
Under the FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program, FICO will now take on functions previously managed by the three nationwide credit bureaus, including advertising, marketing, sales, licensing, reporting, auditing, etc. We can deliver these functions more efficiently and we are passing savings onto lenders.
The funded loan fee applies only to closed loans and further recognizes that the FICO® Score’s value extends beyond lenders and borrowers who benefit greatly when it is subsequently shared by lenders with mortgage insurers, the GSEs, investors, rating agencies and others to facilitate reliability and consistency in the pricing, funding and risk sharing of borrowers’ closed loans, all of which promotes market liquidity and safety and soundness, and delivers lower overall costs to borrowers. A funded loan fee of $33 per borrower per score recognizes the FICO Score’s downstream utility for mortgage insurers, GSEs, investors, rating agencies, and other market participants. The funded loan fee replaces fees previously charged for re-issue of FICO Scores, enabling broad use by participants in the originating market.
Your tri-merge reseller can confirm if they are partnering with FICO to process the FICO® Score. If so, you do not need to do anything, your tri-merge reseller will use this new pricing model for the FICO Score. If your tri-merge reseller is not participating, you can suggest they contact FICO at directlicenseprogram@fico.com to join the program.
This program is expected to be available as early as January at participating tri-merge resellers. FICO is working diligently with tri-merge reseller partners to make the processing and licensing of the FICO® Score available through them as soon as possible. Pricing requests should be referred to your tri-merge resellers. As soon as the FICO® Mortgage Direct License Program is ready at your tri-merge reseller, the processing and license of the FICO Score from the credit bureau will be replaced by the reduced FICO Score license pricing under the direct license program at the tri-merge reseller, eliminating score mark-ups from the three nationwide credit bureaus.
We are working with tri-merge resellers to finalize this mortgage direct license program and installation of FICO software. For tri-merge resellers participating in the program, we expect it will simply be a matter of updating the processing workflow and pricing.
Our mortgage direct license program is currently only available for FICO® Scores for use in mortgage.