Difference in Credit Scoring

At CreditLife we get purchasers asking us every day why every monitoring service has a different score, which is ultimately different from there commercial hard pull, which in most cases differ amongst themselves whether its an auto or mortgage pull.

To be clear, lets begin with hard commercial credit pulls or inquiries. Every credit inquiry is backed by a formula from the bureaus. When you are going for a mortgage, the formula is weighted in favor of your mortgage pay history, because that is what you are applying for. If you dont have a mortgage or any mortgage history, believe it or not, you get a little bump in scoring on that basis because of the way the formula is weighted.

Along the same lines if you have a stellar mortgage history or a terrible mortgage history, you may see your scores higher or lower respectively that you see on a monitoring site for that reason. The same goes for an auto pull, which is weighted in favor of your auto loan pay history, so if you have a stellar auto pay history or a terrible auto pay history, you will see this discrepancy exist based against, in a lot of cases, your monitoring site score. 

With that in mind, and in line with the previous paragraph, most monitoring sites use a general formula because its broad based, which is typically the formula used by creditors when getting credit cards or other lines of unsecured personal credit.  These scores are effective if your utilizing the correct monitoring site and you understand where you will see these scores run meaning credit cards, etc, but need to be understood, which model and score represents what as far as types of credit the specific scores will be applicable for, and proceed accordingly. 

Hope this helps.