By Dick Kazarian, Managing Director – Borrower Analytics Group – January 2026
The Adoption Of Alternative Credit Scores Within The Mortgage Industry Continues To Evolve
As widely reported in numerous trade publications, FICO and the FHFA have recently reached an agreement for the release of historical FICO-10T data with various loan-level single-family datasets. According to Julie May, VP of B2B scores at FICO, “In the coming weeks, the three credit bureaus will deliver FICO Score 10T data to the GSEs, … We expect that the GSEs will conduct their own validation of the data and make FICO Score 10T historical datasets, which will be updated to also include more recent data through 2025, accessible to market participants.”
MIAC has been at the forefront of providing market participants with the research and analytics needed to use alternative scores. Shortly after the historical data on VantageScore-4.0 (VS4) was made available, MIAC developed our proprietary Score Conversion Model (SCM™). This model allows clients to optimally predict the most accurate FICO-Classic score from an inputted VS4 score and additional loan and borrower attributes. This model has been in active use by our valuation and hedging teams for more than a year. The model is also available to our DR® software licensees.
It is worth noting that all of the models and analytics we make available to clients are also used internally by our valuation and hedging teams, which provides a continual feedback/improvement loop.
When the FICO-10T historical data is finally released to the public (likely in 2026-Q1), we will expand our SCM™ to also handle FICO-10T as an input. It is important to note that alternative credit score usage continues to expand in the mortgage market, especially for portfolio loans – as is evident from the adoption statistics the vendors make available.
For further information about our score conversion capabilities, please reach out to me at Dick.Kazarian@miacanalytics.com or your sales representative.
Author, Dick Kazarian, Managing Director, Borrower Analytics Group
Share this Post
