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Average Credit Score
What Is the Average Credit Score in America?
The current average VantageScore® credit score is 736. VantageScores range from 501 to 990. Individuals with low scores are considered to be a great risk to creditors. Based on the industry’s most recent data, Unlike other scoring systems, VantageScore is the most consistent, using only one model with one set of scoring calculations, resulting in scores that are more uniform.
A Brief History of Credit Scores
Today, you can see your credit scores almost instantly, but this wasn’t always the case.
Before credit scores, human judgment was the sole factor in deciding who received credit. Lenders used their past experience with consumer credit behavior as the basis for judging new consumers — a slow, unreliable process.
Lenders eventually began to standardize how they made credit decisions by using a point system that scored the different variables on a consumer’s credit report. This credit score helped to eliminate much of the bias that previously existed. However, the score still was tied to intuitive measures of creditworthiness and was not based on actual consumer behavior.
Credit granting took a huge leap forward when statistical models were built from numerous combinations of variables. These models were constructed using payment information from thousands of actual consumers, which made a credit score highly effective in predicting consumer credit behavior. Scoring models made the credit-granting process extremely fast, efficient and objective, helping consumers quickly get the credit they need.
VantageScore®
VantageScore is the first credit score developed cooperatively by Experian and the other national credit reporting companies. Learn more about VantageScore.
VantageScore® is owned by VantageScore Solutions, LLC.