Fannie and Freddie Put FICO's Rival on Equal Pricing; FICO Falls 27%

On Monday evening, after U.S. markets closed, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte posted once on X.

By Tuesday's close, FICO had fallen from $840.89 to $616.99. The intraday low was $595.19.

SPY fell 0.13% the same day and QQQ rose 0.23%. The broad market stood still; the post alone moved FICO.

"Fannie and Freddie are hereby moving to ONE PRICING GRID"

This Is the Second Step

Earlier this month, Pulte told the two agencies to approve every lender to use VantageScore 4.0. FICO fell 16.7% that day. The details are in our first piece.

That step opened a door. It gave lenders no reason to walk through it.

The reason lives in the pricing table. Fannie Mae's matrix dated Sept. 9 had two separate tables: one for Classic FICO, one for VantageScore 4.0.

What the Table Does

Fannie and Freddie attach an extra charge to every mortgage they buy, based on credit score and down payment. It is called an LLPA, a loan-level price adjustment. The borrower pays it upfront or carries it as a higher rate.

The two tables were not the same. The lowest charge went to FICO scores of 780 and above, but to VantageScore 800 and above. Every bucket boundary sat 20 points higher, and the rates were slightly higher too.

The agency assumed the same borrower scores about 20 points higher on VantageScore. A single table removes that adjustment.

The market did not read this as a competition story.

It read it as a price cut.

The Math: One Borrower, Two Tables

The score's own price is not what decides this.

A lender's choice was set by the bucket in the table, not by a few dozen dollars per score. FICO's pricing power came from being the score that got the borrower a cheaper loan.

The single table flips that. TD Cowen's Jaret Seiberg put it plainly:

"This is effectively an across the board cut in loan level pricing adjustments"

Statement or Action

Pulte used the present tense: "moving." But no merged matrix has been published and no effective date was given.

What binds lenders is not a post on X. It is the Fannie and Freddie pricing matrix and selling guide. The Sept. 9 matrix in force today still carries two tables. Manually underwritten loans still require Classic FICO.

The market did not wait anyway. The reason is that the other side moved at once.

Rocket Mortgage, the country's largest mortgage lender, said it will make VantageScore the default score on eligible direct-to-consumer loans in the fourth quarter. TransUnion, one of the bureaus that owns the rival score, locked its $0.99 price through December 2028.

The Part That Does Not Fit

A single table has a cost, and FICO is not the one paying it.

Two weeks ago, the agency's own tables said VantageScore shows the same borrower about 20 points better. Seiberg flagged the contradiction. The gap has not disappeared; it now sits as a shortfall in the fees Fannie and Freddie collect.

The rival score's co-owners did not rally either. TransUnion fell about 4% and Equifax about 3%, according to reports; both bureaus also resell FICO scores.

FICO peaked at $1,880 in October 2025. Both charts cover one year back from today: FICO above, the broad market below.

What Is Left

RBC's Ashish Sabadra wrote that FICO may need to speed up its move away from per-score fees. The structure the company built this year charges a per-borrower fee on each closed loan.

That structure protects FICO when a lender pulls several scores to compare them. It does not protect FICO when the lender closes the loan on another score.

In valuation terms, a monopoly is worth what it can charge. Once the tables merge, that question becomes which score the lender picks.

This piece draws on Fannie Mae's Sept. 9, 2026 LLPA matrix (primary document); Yahoo Finance and Fast Company reporting of Bill Pulte's X post; Investing.com's roundup of notes from TD Cowen, FT Partners and RBC; and market data from Benzinga and WRE News. The closing price comes from aciliszili.com's intraday data. The borrower in the example is hypothetical; the 20-point gap is the bucket shift between Fannie Mae's two tables and may differ by borrower. The TransUnion and Equifax declines are intraday reports.