FICO's Big Credit Score 'Shake-Up': Why Its Stock is Surging and What They're Not Telling You

So let me get this straight.

A month ago, the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, screaming about FICO being a "monopoly" with "unfair" price hikes. Now, this week, that same guy, Bill Pulte, is patting FICO on the head for its "Creative Solutions to help the American consumer."

You can't make this stuff up.

Don't Call It Progress, It's a Turf War for Your Wallet

The Shell Game Gets a New Shell

For anyone who hasn't been following this particular brand of corporate cage match, here's the deal. Fair Isaac, the Montana company that literally invented the three-digit number that rules your financial life, just announced it’s going to sell its scores directly to mortgage lenders.

They're cutting out the middlemen—Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.

And why does that matter? Because according to a Raymond James analyst, those bureaus were slapping a nearly 100% markup on the scores. For what, exactly? For hitting "send" on a number that FICO already calculated? Give me a break.

FICO’s CEO Will Lansing, in a statement so dry it could start a brush fire, said the goal was to "eliminate unnecessary mark-ups." Translation: "We saw the absurd pile of cash the bureaus were making off our product, and we want it." This ain't about helping the little guy. It’s a turf war between giants, and our mortgages are the territory.

Wall Street sure thinks so. FICO's stock shot up over 20%, its best day in years, while the bureaus all took a nosedive. The market knows exactly what this is: a money grab. And we're all just supposed to sit here and applaud because one monopoly beat up on three other quasi-monopolies, and honestly...

Just a Different Hand in the Same Pocket

Don't Pop the Champagne Just Yet

This is a bad idea. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We're being sold this story about competition and consumer benefits. Pulte, our new FICO cheerleader, is even "encouraging" the bureaus to take "similar creative and constructive actions." What actions? Finding a new way to charge us for our own data?

Does anyone really think our mortgage fees are going to drop significantly? Or will FICO, which was complaining about its own stock being down 9% for the year, just pocket the difference as a thank you to itself? Its just a different hand in the same pocket.

Then again, maybe I'm just too cynical. Maybe this is the first domino in a chain reaction of consumer-friendly competition. And maybe I'll win the lottery tomorrow.

It reminds me of my cable bill. Every year, a new "Broadcast TV Fee" or "Regional Sports Surcharge" appears. They’re all just different words for "give us more money." This FICO move feels like that. They’re not eliminating the fee, they’re just renaming the line item on an invoice we never get to see.

So don't buy the hype. This isn't some heroic act of consumer advocacy. This is a data company looking at the balance sheets of three credit bureaus and deciding it was tired of sharing. We're not the beneficiaries here; we're the product. As always.

So We're Cheering For a Tollbooth Operator Now?

Let's be real. FICO isn't a hero. They're the company that built the gate. All they did was fire the gatekeepers so they could collect the toll themselves. We're not getting a discount; we're just paying a different person at the window. It's the same damn system, just with one less middleman to skim off the top. Progress, I guess.

Reference article source：

• FICO provider is shaking up its credit score business. Its stock is surging - CNBC