3 card issuers give free FICOs
NEW YORK — Want to check your credit score? It might be included on your next creditcard statement.
The FICO score, which is widely used by lenders to gauge your financial health, should be checked before applying for a car loan or a mortgage. But it can cost as much as $20 to do so. Now three creditcard issuers — Discover, Barclaycard US and First Bankcard — have signed up to allow 35 million cardholders to check their FICO scores every month at no cost. More lenders are expected to sign up.
“I think it’s fantastic,” said Ted Sarenski, a certified public accountant and financial planner at Blue Ocean Strategic Capital. “People should be watching that score and asking how they could improve it.”
The move is an initiative by Fair Isaac Corp., the company that developed the FICO score, to enable more people to see their score for free and get its brand in front of consumers. Websites such as Credit.com, CreditSesame.com and CreditKarma.com have offered free credit scores for years. Those scores are derived differently from FICOs but offer a similar three-digit score.
The FICO score ranges from 300 to 850. The higher the score, the better. People with higher scores are offered lower interest rates from lenders and credit-card companies. Most lenders pay Fair Isaac to see the scores of potential borrowers when determining if they will approve an application. What has changed is that Fair Issac has agreed to let some lenders share the scores with customers. It’s not charging the lenders more to do so.
Discover Financial Services, the nation’s sixth-largest credit card issuer, is the biggest lender to sign up. Cardholders of its “Discover It” branded credit cards will see their FICO scores on their monthly statements now. Discover will offer scores to all of its credit cards in the next few months.
Barclaycard and First Bankcard customers will have to log on to the websites to view their credit scores. Barclaycard, the credit-card unit of Barclays PLC, said that 80 percent of its 8 million cardholders will have access to their FICO scores by December. So far, 80,000 First Bankcard customers have access to their FICO scores. It will roll out to its 2.5 million cardholders over the next few months.