That's where a business runs a credit check as though a customer is applying for a loan. To find out his FICO score, Agarwal had to agree to what's known as a "hard" credit check. FICO says 90 per cent of Canadian lenders use it, including major banks.īut Canadian consumers cannot access their FICO score on their own. company, sells its score to both Equifax and TransUnion. The score that most Canadian lenders use is called a FICO score, previously known as the Beacon score. "They're not necessarily reliable from my perspective."Īll consumer credit score platforms have small fine-print messages on their sites explaining that lenders might consult a different score from the one provided. "So, we don't know what these scores represent," said Vince Gaetano, principal broker at MonsterMortgage.ca. We spoke with multiple lenders in the financial, automotive and mortgage sectors, who all said they would not accept any of the scores our participants received from the four websites. Marketplace learned that none of the scores the four websites provide is necessarily the same as the one lenders are most likely to use when determining Agarwal's creditworthiness. So, which credit score is giving Agarwal the clearest picture of his credit standing? But these factors can be weighted differently depending on the credit bureau or lender, resulting in different scores.
#Credit karma score vs actual score free
The free websites, Borrowell and Credit Karma, purchase the scores they provide to consumers from Equifax and TransUnion, respectively, yet all four companies share a different score with a different proprietary name.Ĭredit scores are calculated based on many factors, including payment history credit utilization, which is how much of a loan you owe versus how much you have available to you money owing how long you've been borrowing and the types of credit you have. The results when three consumers checked their credit score using four different websites. The largest gap between two scores for the same participant was 125 points. The other two participants also each received four different scores from the four different services. "I don't know why there's a confusion like that." "That's so strange, because the scoring should be based on the same principles," he said. On Credit Karma, his score of 762 was labelled "very good."Īs for the paid sites, Equifax provided a "good" score of 684, while TransUnion said his 686 score was "poor."Īgarwal was surprised by the inconsistent results.
One of the participants was Raman Agarwal, a 58-year-old small business owner from Ottawa, who says he pays his bills on time and has little debt.Ĭanadian company Borrowell's site said he had a "below average" credit score of 637.
We had three Canadians check their credit scores using four different services: Credit Karma and Borrowell, which are both free and Equifax and TransUnion, which charge about $20 a month for credit monitoring, a plan that includes access to your credit score. Not surprisingly, many Canadians want to know their score, and there are several web-based services that offer to provide it.īut a Marketplace investigation has found that the same consumer is likely to get significantly different credit scores from different websites - and chances are none of those scores actually matches the one lenders consult when deciding your financial fate.
It can be the difference between having a credit card with a manageable interest rate or one that keeps you drowning in debt. That slightly mysterious number can determine whether you're able to secure a loan and how much extra it will cost to pay it back. Whether through ads or our own experiences dealing with banks and other lenders, Canadians are frequently reminded of the power of a single number, a credit score, in determining their financial options.
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