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# Washington gave mortgage lenders a cheaper credit score, and FICO lost a quarter of its value
- URL: https://www.sharespective.com/stories/washington-gave-mortgage-lenders-cheaper-credit-2026-10-05/
- Published: 2026-10-04T21:15:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-19T19:28:45.000Z
- Description: Fair Isaac, the company behind the FICO credit score, fell 26.52% to US$617.87 last Tuesday. That was its worst day since 1989, and the shares finished the week 23.4% lower at US$661.25.
- Author: Shaun Botha
- Tags: Credit, #story, #group-economy, FICO

Fair Isaac, the company behind the FICO credit score, fell 26.52% to US$617.87 last Tuesday. That was its worst day since 1989, and the shares finished the week 23.4% lower at US$661.25.

**The change sounds technical, and it reaches the core of the business.** On Monday, Bill Pulte, who runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will price mortgages off one grid. VantageScore, a cheaper rival built by the credit bureaus, joins FICO Classic on it.

Until now a VantageScore had to be 20 points higher than a FICO score to earn the same loan price. That gap gave lenders a cost reason to stay with FICO, even after it doubled its mortgage price to about US$10 a score this year.

![Chart: Fair Isaac's revenue rose every year to FY2025. Its market value fell from US$47.7bn to US$14.3bn. Two scales, both from zero: revenue by financial year to September in US$m on the left, market value at each year end and on 2 October in US$bn on the right.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/02/71/0271df32-cec6-421f-9f13-b06ab90e54c1/content/images/2026/10/washington-gave-mortgage-lenders-cheaper-credit-2026-10-05-chart.jpg)

This story’s chart of the day.

The rival costs a tenth of that. TransUnion will keep VantageScore 4.0 at 99 US cents a score until December 2028\. Rocket Mortgage, the country's largest home lender by volume, will make it the default on eligible loans from this quarter.

FICO bounced 11.69% on Thursday. Mortgage bonds still require a FICO score, Yahoo Finance points out, so many lenders may keep paying for both.

Worth pondering 

how many lenders follow Rocket. I'd wait for a second big name to switch its default before judging how much of FICO's mortgage business is really at risk.

[ This story ran in Rescued By Friday Monday 5 October’s edition, with the market snapshot, the other two stories, the numbers and the week ahead. Read the whole edition → ](https://www.sharespective.com/sharespective-2026-10-05/)