how vantagescore works
the latest version of vantagescore is vantagescore 4 it is calculated based on six factors each assigned its own weighting 1the first three factors are by far the most important accounting for 81 of a person s vantagescore payment history reflects how consistently the person has paid their credit bills on time age and mix of credit refers to how long they have had their credit accounts and whether they have used different kinds of credit such as a credit card and an auto loan it s a plus to have older accounts and several account types credit utilization looks at how much of a person s available credit they re currently using the lower the percentage the better vantagescore obtains its information from all three credit bureaus private companies that create and sell credit reports about individuals to lenders credit reports consist of information on the person s current and recent credit accounts such as mortgages auto loans and credit cards typically going back as far as seven years they do not contain information on the person s income or assets or personal details such as their marital status race or ethnicity 2credit bureaus obtain their information from individuals creditors and in some cases court records because not every creditor supplies information to all three bureaus and some don t supply it to any of them a person s credit report can differ from one bureau to another vantagescore cites its access to reports from all three bureaus as one of its advantages billing itself as the first and only tri bureau credit scoring model 3vantagescore also highlights its use of machine learning and trended data trended credit data it explains reflects changes in credit behaviors over time in contrast to the static individual credit history records that have long been available in consumer credit files and used in generic scoring models these techniques it says allow it to assign credit scores to more people especially those whose credit histories are too short for other credit scoring models often referred to as people with thin files 4