Vantage Score

Vantage score was launched on the 14th March 2006 by the three major credit bureau‘s in the United States (Equifax, Experian & Transunion) to try to compete directly with the mostly widely used credit rating, FICO score. Vantage Score is a three digit number between 501-990. It can be broken down into an A-F grade as follows;

 Vantage Score Range

Grade	Score Range
A	901–990 (Excellent)
B	801-900 (Very Good/Good)
C	701–800 (Good/Fair)
D	601–700 (Fair/Bad)
F	501–600 (Very Bad)

Vantage Credit Score

Even though they all use the same  underlingscoring system and criteria each bureau is likely to report a slight difference in scores, this is because they collect their own consumer credit data and the score is based upon this data. If you see a big difference between your Vantage Scores then it’s likely there is a discrepancy between the credit bureau’s, the easiest way to find out what this discrepancy is to request your credit report from the three bureau’s – each American is allowed to do this for free once every twelve months.

You can read our guide on getting your free credit reports here.

Scores are based on the following factors; payment history (32%), credit utilization (23%), credit balances (15%), depth of credit (13%), recent credit (10%), available credit (7%). Below is a handy table of the break down along with a description of each rating factor.

Rating Factor	Description	Weight
Payment History	how timely and consistent your payments are	32%
Credit Utilization	debt to available credit ratio (debt÷available credit)	23%
Credit Balances	what your total debt is; most likely, delinquent debt is counted more harshly than current debt	15%
Depth of Credit	length of credit history	13%
Recent Credit	how recent and many new hard inquiries and new accounts there are	10%
Available Credit	how much credit can be accessed, for example, could you spend $50,000 of credit tonight or within the next week	7%

 

In October of 2010 Vantage Score 2 was released