In a nice change of pace, all three credit reporting agencies, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion have joined together in developing a new way to score your credit. The three say that this new scoring system, called VantageScore, was developed to make the loan process simpler and easier for both consumers and credit providers.

If you've applied for a credit card or mortgage or applied for credit for some other major purchase, you will know about credit scoring. Probably the most popular scoring system is called FICO for Fair Isaac Company, the company that developed it. But there are a variety of other credit-scoring systems available to lenders. The results of this can be a confusing array of credit scores with wide discrepancies. For example, depending on which score your lender used, you might have been turned down or approved for credit or assessed a higher or lower interest rate.

The new VantageScore system will have scores from 501 to 990 with the higher the score, the better. Because the new system uses information about a large group of customers from all three credit bureaus, it will create a more standardized scoring formula. The joint scoring should eliminate the discrepancies in current credit scoring that can be as wide as 30 percent. However, all three credit bureaus have admitted that some discrepancies may continue to exist as the they do not always receive exactly the same information about consumers.

As good as this may sound, don't hold your breath about a new Advant

ageScore any time soon. The challenge is to get businesses to use this new score rather than whichever score they use now. Also, at least one score provider, Equifax, says it will wait until lenders accept the new score before offering it to consumers - and this could take as long as six months. Even then, each of the three bureaus will market the AdvantageScore its own way and will set its own price. However, you will still be able to get one free credit report, or AdvantageScore, a year as this is Federal law.

Watch your local newspaper for information on AdvantageScore as it becomes more of a reality in the months to come.

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