The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced on July 8 that lenders may now use VantageScore 4.0 (VS4) for mortgages sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, effective immediately. This marks a historic shift in the U.S. mortgage market, ending the decades-long reliance on a single credit-score provider for conventional loans.
In late 2022, the FHFA started an initiative to make changes to credit scores that government-sponsored enterprises (GSE) require from lenders. KBRA highlighted the initiative in a July 2024 research report, taking a deep dive into available information and examining the potential use of VantageScore 4.0 as the credit scoring model for conforming loans (see GSEs Release Historical VantageScore 4.0 Score Data). At that time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had released a vast historical dataset of VantageScore 4.0 credit scores on past…