Why Is My Credit Score Different With Borrowell?

So you heard about Borrowell’s weekly credit score monitoring service and decided to try it out. Woo hoo!

Just one problem. You sign up online, only to discover that your score is different than when you checked your score directly with Equifax, your bank, or another company. What gives?

Score differences are to be expected. Our customers are often surprised to learn they have many different credit scores. This creates some confusion. Let us explain and clear it up.

First things first. Yes, we display your Equifax credit score!

The Equifax credit score you receive from the Borrowell website is generated directly from Equifax and is called the Equifax Risk Score (ERS 2.0). ERS 2.0 is an Equifax credit score model used by many lenders and institutions when making real-world lending decisions. It’s a legitimate and popular credit score model. We use the ERS 2.0 score in our own lending decisions and choose to show you ERS 2.0 for that reason.

If you checked your score directly with Equifax:

The credit score you obtained from the Equifax website uses a slightly different model for weighing credit score factors.

The credit score provided to you by Equifax is intended for your own educational use. It’s important to remember that even if the score is different from your ERS 2.0 score, both of the scores you accessed are legitimate Equifax credit scores and are powered by Equifax’s proprietary data assets. The scores just weigh information differently and may produce a different result.

Credit bureaus like Equifax actually produce many different scores. 

Understandably, this leads to a lot of confusion. It’s important to note that one score is not “more accurate” or “correct” than another score. Each score is accurate according to the scoring models used. For example, there are industry-specific scores, scores primarily used for educational purposes, as well, score models based on specific lending criteria. For example, a mortgage lender may look at a different score than your bank does when they are deciding whether to grant a credit card or new credit limit.

Sign up for Borrowell and monitor your credit score on a weekly basis. It takes less than 3 minutes, it's free, and it won't affect your credit score.

Just how many scores are there?

On the Equifax side alone, there’s ERS 1.1, ERS 2.0, BEACON 4.0, BEACON 5.0, BEACON 9.0, CRP 3.0, and BNI 2.0 (probably missing a few)…all of these score models are proprietary to Equifax and powered by Equifax’s comprehensive and unique data assets. 

Scores can change at any moment.

 If you are comparing scores using the same credit scoring model, you must also make sure that you are comparing scores at the same time since credit scores will change over time as the credit bureau’s model receives new information.

If you checked your score with TransUnion:

In Canada, we also have a second credit bureau called TransUnion. 

Similar to Equifax, TransUnion has different credit score models that may incorporate different information than Equifax. It is very likely that your score with TransUnion differs from Equifax. Do not worry too much about the differences! The important thing is that you monitor your score information and have a clear picture of where you stand over time.