Where Does my Credit Score Come From?
There are three major credit reporting bureaus that handle consumer information: Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. Among other activities, when you seek or get credit, the activity on your accounts is reported to one or more of these agencies. This data is added to your report and, depending upon what type of activity it represents, it either raises or lowers your credit score.
There are many different types of credit scores. By and large, most lenders use what’s called the FICO score, which includes data from all three of the credit scoring agencies. Some monitoring companies offer a different credit score than FICO. Make sure you understand if this is the case and how the scale for scoring works. These systems are seldom equivalent to one another and there’s no reliable way to convert each of them to any other type of credit score. All of them, however, have value for determining your creditworthiness.