President Obama announced at a speech at the Federal Trade Comission that a number of financial institutions would be offering consumers access to their FICO score for free. You can watch the full 9:34 minute video below (FICO information starts at around 1 minute), or skip it for the run down of who will be offering what.
 FICO Scores
- Ally. Pilot program will begin in February with a full launch planned for this summer, will only be available to their auto finance customers. In total around 2 million people will have access to their score in this way, consumers will need to set up a free online account profile at https://www.ally.com/auto/. Will be based on your Experian report and updated quarterly, they are still finalizing what model they will use.
- Bank of America. BofA will begin offering these scores for free “later this year”, no other information was given. They have been contacted for more information. Update: Official response: “We will begin offering FICO scores to consumer credit card customers later this year. No more details to share at this point.”
- Chase. Chase will be offering a free FICO score, but only on their Chase Slate product. This will be offered later this year, we’ve contacted them for more information. Update: “No other information to share at this time”
- Citibank. This was already announced, but Citi bank will be providing free scores on all of their own cards. Co-branded cards will not have a free score, you can view the list of cards that will here. These scores are due to be available to consumers sometime later this month, this will be based on a consumers Equifax credit report. They will be giving consumers access to the same score they use in the lending decision, but declined to comment what scoring model this is until after the launch.
- State Employees Credit Union of North Carolina.
Will also be offering this sometime later this year.This is already available to consumers, you must have an active lending relationship with SECU to qualify. The score is based on your Equifax credit score and is updated on a quarterly basis (around February 15th, May 15th, August 15th and November 15th). More information can be found here. They use the FICO classic 2008 model.
Non FICO Scores
I don’t see the value in offering these scores as it’s already easy for consumers to access them through free sites such as: Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, Quizzle, Credit.com & WisePiggy
- USAA. Will give their credit card holders access to their VantageScore based on their Experian credit report.
Final Thoughts
Credit card issuers offering free FICO scores has been a pretty slow process, Discover was the first major card issuer to offer this benefit with Barclaycard following suit quickly after. Given how cheap it is to offer this benefit, I’m surprise more card issuers haven’t jumped at the chance when it’s something informed consumers have been asking for a long time.
It’s a bit disappointing that Chase’s offering will only be available to Slate credit card holders, I would’ve liked to see them at least offer it on all of their Chase only branded credit cards. We already knew that Citi would be offering these scores for free, so their press team certainly has done a good job of getting President Obama to mention it twice.
Bank of America is the most interesting of the announcements for me today, it’ll be interesting to see if they offer it to all of the credit card holders and what scoring model they will offer consumers. Hopefully these announcements encourage American Express to continue their pilot program and end up offering all of their cardholders access to their FICO scores for free.
If you’d like to see a full list of ways to get your FICO score for free then I’d recommending reading this article which we constantly update. You can also find out how often these scores update here.
Damn Chase. I wish they would add FICO score tracking on all of its Chase cards like Citibank is planning on doing.
Title was really exciting but the details still look like the banks are dragging their feet on this. I kind of think it’s unfair how scores are not free since they’re calculated from our personal information for the benefit of others the concept of paying for your own info is odd. Sometimes I also wish there were clear underwriting standards so you’d know what you qualify for instead of all this hazy stuff with hard inquiries into the dark.
Yup, I daresay this is happening because there was the threat of legislation that would force them to provide these scores for free. I still think that legislation should be introduced, it’s crazy how cheap it is for them to provide FICO scores.
I’m hopeful BofA will offer an Experian FICO score since that seems to be the most uncommon credit bureau that’s used for generating these free scores. Plus Experian is the bureau normally pulls for credit card applications.
Yep, fingers crossed somebody ends up offering Experian. American Express is currently offering that with their pilot test and Experian would be the most premium offering so I’d be surprised if they didn’t roll it out to at least some cardholders (hopefully all of them).