FICO, TransUnion Slide on Report FHFA May Require Two Credit Bureaus

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4▲0 ▼4Impact / 5
Summary · why it matters

Fair Isaac shares fell 7% after hours Thursday and TransUnion dropped 6% following a Bloomberg report that the Federal Housing Finance Agency plans to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to require lenders to pull credit data from two major credit reporting bureaus instead of three. The requirement could be announced as soon as Oct. 12, when FHFA Director Bill Pulte is scheduled to speak at a mortgage industry conference in Chicago, according to a person familiar with the plans cited by Bloomberg. The move would mark another significant change for an industry already under pressure from Pulte, who has repeatedly called for lower credit-reporting and scoring costs in the mortgage market and said on Sept. 3 that the agency was seriously considering bi-merge. It adds to a brutal stretch for FICO, whose shares plunged nearly 49% in September, including a 27% drop on Sept. 29, after FHFA put VantageScore, FICO's main rival, on the same mortgage-pricing grid as the traditional FICO Classic score. Three companies, Equifax, Experian Plc and TransUnion, dominate the credit-reporting industry and jointly own VantageScore, and mortgage lenders have traditionally used a tri-merge report combining credit data from all three bureaus, so the reported change represents a potential double hit: greater competition for FICO in mortgage scoring and lower demand for the bureaus' traditional three-bureau reports.

Impact on assets 7

Cybersecurity & Digital Trust▼ · 2 stocks
TransUnion
TRU
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

Reported bi-merge requirement would lower demand for TransUnion's traditional three-bureau mortgage reports.

Equifax Inc
EFX
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

FHFA bi-merge requirement would cut demand for the traditional three-bureau reports that Equifax dominates.

Financials▲ · 2 stocks
Artificial Intelligence▼ · 1 stocks
Fair Isaac Corporation
FICO
▼ NegativeCompetitionrelevance

Bi-merge mandate would intensify competition for FICO in mortgage scoring, following FHFA's move to put VantageScore on the same pricing grid.

Cloud & Digital Infrastructure▼ · 1 stocks
Experian PLC
EXPN
▼ NegativeDemandrelevance

As a co-owner of the credit bureaus, Experian faces lower demand for traditional three-bureau reports under the reported bi-merge change.

Consumer Discretionary▲ · 1 stocks

Off-coverage companies 1

VantageScore Solutions, LLCPrivate± Mixed
relevance

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