By Andrew Ackerman 

WASHINGTON -- One firm's dominance over the credit scores used to vet many U.S. mortgages is getting a shake-up.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two mortgage-finance firms that back nearly half of U.S. mortgages, will have to consider credit-score alternatives to Fair Isaac Corp.'s FICO score when determining a mortgage applicant's creditworthiness, under a new rule completed on Tuesday by the mortgage-finance giants' federal overseer.

The move by the Federal Housing Finance Agency is seen as a win for VantageScore, a credit-score system by VantageScore Solutions LLC, which is owned by the three large credit-reporting firms: Equifax Inc., TransUnion and Experian PLC.

Tuesday's rule sets up a four-phase process for Fannie and Freddie to validate and approve credit score models. The measure is required by a regulatory rollback signed into law last year.

(More)

AnnaMaria Andriotis contributed to this article.

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 13, 2019 14:17 ET (18:17 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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