Required Credit Score Disclosure

You may know of the law requiring credit bureaus to give every consumer a copy of their free annual credit report. This law, unfortunately, doesn’t give consumers access to their credit scores. But, there’s another law that gives some consumers a free credit score but only after making a credit-based application. The new credit score disclosure law requires banks to give a free credit score to applicants who are either denied or approved with less favorable terms because of their credit. You don’t have to do anything to get this free credit score. It’s automatically sent based on the creditor’s decision.

Unfortunately, there are times when you won’t get this free credit score, even if you’re denied. For example, banks don’t have to send the credit score disclosure when they use an in-house credit score and insurance companies aren’t required to disclose the credit-based score used to assign your insurance premium.

Not a FICO Score

With the exception of the Discover Credit Scorecard, the drawback to free credit scores is that the scores likely won’t be a FICO score, the score that’s most often used by lenders. Credit Karma, Quizzle, and Credit Sesame all give you a credit bureau’s version of your credit score, i.e a FAKO score. These scores may vary from each other and typically vary from your FICO score even based on that bureau’s credit report.

You may get a free FICO score with a credit score disclosure, but that’s only if the bank used a FICO score in making their decision. Otherwise, you’ll get another score, but it will be the actual score the bank used, rather than an educational score.