Mortgage industry trade groups agree that changes need to be made to lower costs of credit reporting. But there doesn’t seem to be clear agreement on how to do this.
On Friday, Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) President and CEO Bob Broeksmit sent a letter to Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), strongly urging the removal of a mandate that requires mortgage borrowers to pay for reports from three credit reporting agencies for loans eligible for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The costs for these Equifax, Experian and TransUnion reports have been rising, and the MBA estimates they will increase in 2026 by another 40% to 50%.
Instead, Broeksmit is encouraging the agency to allow lenders the option to rely on a single credit report if the initial report has a credit score of 700 or above.
“A single report for borrowers with good credit would encourage competition among the bureaus to improve accuracy and lower costs,” Broeksmit wrote. “Single-file reports are safely used in virtually every other consumer finance market, such as home equity, auto and unsecured consumer lending. Allowing a single-file option in the conventional mortgage market, with appropriate guardrails, will spur competition, improve service and lower costs for borrowers.”
An FHFA spokesman replied to Scotsman Guide when asked about the MBA’s letter: “We are moving quickly to implement the Credit Score Competition Act of 2018 signed by President Trump and bring much-needed competition to the credit score marketplace.”
In 2022, under the previous tenure of Director Sandra L. Thompson, the FHFA announced plans to shift to a bi-merge credit scoring model that would have required data pulls from just two credit bureaus. But that plan was put on indefinite hold in January, shortly after news broke of Thompson’s impending resignation.
Kimber White, president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB), told Scotsman Guide he agrees “with the premise of what the MBA says,” though he emphasized the need for uniformity in the structure of any such plan.
He pointed to the existing system where you can have large variations between scores among the three bureaus, and mortgage rates can be impacted up to a half-point based on which score is used — not to mention any potential impact on the cost of monthly mortgage insurance due to credit score.
“I’m all for trying to find solutions, but are we really looking at the repercussions from those solutions? Are we looking at potential downsides?” White asked. “We’re saying, ‘This is great,’ but does it help the consumer? How does that happen?”
Without uniformity and guidelines, White is concerned about potential manipulation of the system, with credit score submissions being cherry-picked to send to different lenders.
The Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA), which represents consumer reporting agencies, including credit bureaus, told Scotsman Guide in an email that a “tri-merge report remains the gold standard for understanding a borrower’s history and making sound lending decisions.”
A press release issued by CDIA in November said “the price increases we are seeing play out in the industry are primarily the result of FICO’s price increase and actions.”
“The tri-merge system in place today is an indispensable part of the work to help more prospective homebuyers safely enter the mortgage market,” the CDIA stated. “Complete and accurate data is the foundation of powerful and predictive mortgage underwriting and are critical to the safety and soundness of the U.S. mortgage market.”
The efforts to reform the credit reporting system come after big changes were announced throughout 2025.
Previously, only Fair Isaac Corp.’s Classic FICO model was allowed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. In July, Pulte announced VantageScore 4.0 (jointly owned by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) could be used by lenders. In November, he posted on social media that his agency was in talks to add FICO 10T as an approved scoring model.
FICO, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion have not responded to Scotsman Guide’s requests for comment.
