In the halls of the Colorado Convention Center on Monday, it was hard not to overhear mortgage bankers gnashing their teeth over the rumored price hikes for Fair Isaac Corp (FICO) scores.

“They’ve got us by the balls,” said one mortgage pro in an interview between sales meetings at Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Annual 2024 in Denver. “It’s an abuse of power, a complete monopoly.”

“It’s outrageous,” huffed another in an interview as he walked beneath a banner that touted FICO as the presenting sponsor of the event. “What choice do we have but to pay more? And you just know the [credit reporting] bureaus are going to pad their fees using this as cover, too.”

FICO, the company that retains the rights to the market’s adopted methodology to measure consumer credit risk and licenses the scores to the credit reporting bureaus, currently charges $3.50 per score to all mortgage lenders, independent of their volume. A tier-based structure of $0.60 to $2.75 per score was implemented in 2023, which resulted in prices for some lenders increasing by up to 400%. After complaints from lenders, FICO returned to a fixed royalty of $3.50 per FICO score in 2024. But it collected the same per-score price for soft pulls and hard pulls. Wall Street expects new cost increases in 2025 and 2026.

A tri-merge report that a couple years ago was $20 is around $60 right now, one industry pro told HousingWire. Though mortgage lenders don’t want to charge borrowers upfront, many have had to because the pull-through rate on loans makes it economically infeasible otherwise, especially for refis. “We have to eat that otherwise and it’s discouraging [for borrowers],” she said. Rising credit reporting costs mean that some lenders pay hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars, more than they used to, depending on the volume of mortgage applications they’re processing.

What the mortgage industry’s been told

Despite widespread speculation and hints during company earnings calls, FICO has neither confirmed nor denied that cost increases on credit reporting will affect mortgage lenders in 2025.

“We have not provided the pricing details to our channel partners,” a FICO spokesperson told HousingWire when asked about the rumored hikes for 2025. “Until that is finalized, we have no comment.”

HousingWire asked over a dozen lending executives if they’ve received any communications from FICO regarding potential price increases; none said they had.

Several mortgage executives, however, told HousingWire that reps at credit reporting agencies and resellers will receive information on the FICO price increases after the election, and lenders will know the full costs later in November or in early December.