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I wanted to put an opinion in on this subject as I see it often since as a loan officer I have the conversations with the borrowers. in this day and age of constant credit "monitoring" from bank statements to aps to alerts on our phones, it seems that there is already a lot of unnecessary confusion. It is difficult to explain why their credit score through a company like Credit Karma is different than what we use. The impression is that they have been duped or, even worse, that its just a "line" we use. Sure they can verify the information online, but most people won't. They feel what they feel. Utilizing the Vantage score would make it easier for the borrower because then it would closely match what they have already found to be their score. It would certainly be easier for the clients to understand. The other issue is how FICO works and creates the score. I have a client right now who has paid all his debts on time for over two years, has a few medical collections, and what is hurting his score is that two of his current creditors are reporting a $0 past due balance. Even with the amount being reported as 0, it is hurting his score by more than 20 points. Errors and lack of common sense in the calculating of credit scores hurts the consumer and does not allow underwriters to make accurate decisions. They are hoping the FICO score is calculated on correct information and when it's not its up to the burden of the client to fix it, which takes time. I believe the Vantage Score allows for another verification when there are errors such as these to be evaluated and a second score available. perhaps, what can happen is an average of FICO and Vantage be used on all loan applications. This way no one will be discriminated against, the client knows we are looking at the scores they get from their third party credit score provider, and we still take in the risk assessed by FICO. This feels to be a happy medium that will allow for a balanced consideration of credit worthiness.