FHFA 局长 Pulte 重启对征信评分收费的抨击，指示两房允许全部贷款机构使用 VantageScore 并研究 bi-merge/单一信用报告，FICO 单日暴跌 16.7%（盘中 -21%）、Equifax/TransUnion 跌约 6%

Shares of Fair Isaac Corp., Equifax Inc. and TransUnion tumbled on Friday after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte renewed his long-standing criticism of the costs of consumer credit scores.

“Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have been overcharging Americans for far too long,” Pulte said in a post on X on Thursday, adding that “this will end soon.”

The post sent Fair Isaac, the analytics company behind so-called FICO scores, tumbling as much as 21%, the biggest drop since March 2020, to the lowest since late April. Equifax and TransUnion both fell as much as 11%.

The government was considering “bi-merge, and stronger solutions,” he added. A bi-merge credit report uses data and scores from two major credit bureaus instead of three, cutting the number of reports sold.

In a second post he added that he was instructing mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to “approve all lenders to use VantageScore,” a rival to FICO. On Friday, Pulte said they were also “studying the usage of just one credit report to bring even more savings than we already have to American consumers.”

Trashing the affordability of credit scores has been a consistent theme for Pulte, and his comments caused shares of Fair Isaac and the credit rating companies to swing multiple times in the past. Last year, Pulte had upended the system when he decided that FICO scores would get competition from VantageScore Solutions LLC.

The government’s housing agencies also previously tried to pull down home-loan rates by moving to buy up mortgage-backed securities, only to see rates continue to climb on the back of rising Treasury yields, a trend that has vexed the Trump administration.

Pulte likely sees “attacking the cost of obtaining mortgages as helpful to the Republican arguments before the midterm that they are tackling affordability,” TD Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg wrote in a late Thursday note.

Seiberg raised the possibility Pulte may seek to “use Fannie and Freddie to cap the cost of credit reports and credit scores.” At the same time, FICO may face less risk than the credit bureaus because there’s “not enough known about VantageScore scoring to know how it compares to FICO.”

That may mean that for now, “lenders are likely to buy both scores to ensure borrowers get the lowest loan-level pricing adjustment.” Seiberg also expects there are more Pulte comments to come.