Congress wants to accelerate a shake-up of one firm’s dominance over the credit scores used to vet many U.S. mortgages, the Wall Street Journal reported. Lawmakers last week proposed adding a provision to a bank-deregulation bill that would require mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to consider credit scores beyond Fair Isaac Corp.’s FICO score for determining a mortgage applicant’s creditworthiness. Fannie and Freddie backed nearly half of all U.S. mortgage dollars originated in 2017, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. The measure, should it become law, would be a big win for VantageScore, a credit-score system by VantageScore Solutions LLC, owned by three large credit-reporting firms: Equifax Inc., TransUnion and Experian PLC.
