FICO announced that FHA-approved lenders will be able to use FICO Score 10T for mortgage underwriting starting January 1, 2027, the exact same effective date VantageScore 4.0 got for its own FHA approval, announced within hours of FICO’s release on the same morning. That is not a coincidence. It is two competing credit-scoring companies racing to plant a flag on the same regulatory milestone, and neither wanted to let the other own the news cycle alone.

FICO Score 10T uses trended credit data and rental payment history, the same broad category of “look at behavior over time” scoring that VantageScore is selling. FICO’s release leans on independent analyses claiming Score 10T beats competing models by more than 10% on FHA first-time-homebuyer mortgages, with a bigger edge during higher-default periods, which is the scenario that actually matters to a mortgage insurer. Julie May, FICO’s VP and general manager of B2B scores, called the approval good for “industry clarity” and said the model will sharpen underwriting accuracy.

FICO is also offering the score free through its “FICO Score 10T Free Access” program alongside Classic FICO, presumably to lower the switching cost for lenders weighing it against VantageScore. FICO’s scores are used by roughly 90% of top U.S. lenders across more than 40 countries, and the company holds over 200 patents in predictive analytics, a scale advantage VantageScore is still years away from matching regardless of how many regulatory approvals it collects.

Reading FICO’s release next to VantageScore’s, the “10% more accurate” claim is the one to interrogate rather than accept. It comes from FICO’s own commissioned analysis, not an independent regulator study, and VantageScore has made comparable performance claims about its own model in the past. Both companies have a financial reason to publish the number that flatters them. Until FHA or an outside party runs a head-to-head on the same loan pool, “more accurate” is a marketing claim wearing a lab coat. Lenders evaluating either model would be better served waiting for FHA’s own performance data once both scores have been running against real default outcomes for a year or two.

Fintechbits analysis

Why FICO Score 10T’s Free-Access Play Matters

What’s actually notable is the defensive posture. FICO has held a near-monopoly on mortgage credit scoring for decades because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac required Classic FICO by rule, not because lenders chose it competitively. The Pulte-era push at FHFA to let VantageScore into that pipeline threatens that position for the first time in a generation, and FICO’s free-access program looks like a direct response: match the newcomer’s price to keep lenders from switching on cost alone.

That’s a rational competitive move, but it’s also a tell that FICO sees this as a genuine threat, not a formality. A company confident in a permanent monopoly does not typically respond to a new competitor’s regulatory approval by waiving its own fee on the same day. FICO’s pricing power in mortgage scoring has never really been tested before, since lenders had no alternative the GSEs would accept, and this is the first real market signal of what FICO thinks that power is worth defending.

The two companies will now spend the next fifteen months lobbying individual lenders, since an FHA approval only creates the option to use a score, not a requirement to switch. Loan officers are creatures of habit, and Classic FICO has been the default input in underwriting software for so long that inertia alone favors the incumbent, free access program or not.

Watch which large FHA-approved lenders announce a scoring model choice before the January 2027 window opens, since that’s a stronger signal than either company’s own press release.