FICO shocked the mortgage & financial world yesterday w/ its announcement that it’s cutting out the credit reporting bureaus & selling directly to mortgage lenders.

The new program, dubbed Mortgage Direct License, is essentially FICO saying, “We’re not going to let the bureaus—which collectively form VantageScore—add margin when they sell it to resellers, so we’ll keep prices where they are & go to Xactus, Cotality, Factual Data, etc. directly, and they’ll sell a tri-merge report to the lender. Too bad, so sad, bureaus!”

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To be clear, FICO is keeping its current program, in which lenders pay $10 per score. But the company is betting that lenders flock 🦅 to Mortgage Direct License, in which FICO charges $4.95 per score and $33 for a closed loan. Lenders are getting a “50% discount” since it doesn’t have the margin added by the bureaus & they don’t have to pay everything upfront, one CRA source said. That matters hugely when considering fallout rate.

“So what FICO is saying is that lenders end up saving a ton of money by only paying half the price for your hard & soft, but when the loan closes, you need to give me $33 per loan, per borrower, per score. So it's 3×3, so it's $99 bucks, right? They're just shifting the money from from one pot to another.”

The source continued: “From a RESPA perspective, lenders have more flexibility now to put that in the closing disclosure for the borrower b/c those are the true costs from a credit perspective. There will be some savings, but I think lenders will tremendously reduce the loss that they're incurring today because they're able to shift some of those costs. Ultimately, the consumers are going to pay.”

Certain lenders will benefit more than others. Consumer direct shops, which have higher fallout rates, would theoretically pay less in credit costs per borrower. Rocket, for example, could save tens of millions easy on the new program, one source noted. (Rocket spent north of $200M last year on credit reports, The Scoop hears.)

But here’s the rub: The credit reporting bureaus Transunion, Experian and Equifax are still providing the underlying data & they’re likely to charge the resellers more for the reports next year.

"FICO doesn't care,” said one source. “They’re saying, ‘I'm getting more than what I used to get than before. What do I care if others jack up their prices?’ Essentially, FICO is eating the bureaus’ lunch right now."

Sources told The Mortgage Scoop that this new program has been in the works for many months & is in part a reaction to the pressure 😅 exerted by the FHFA. Bill Pulte seems at least somewhat supportive of the new program. On the tech side, several of the big resellers have similar integrations w/ FICO Simulator 🛩 , but the technology piece is a bit of a variable, sources told The Scoop.

There are skeptics who say lenders & resellers are misinterpreting the program & it won’t save anyone anything. One lender source said that he believes the average mortgage company with a 20% pull through rate, assuming it’s all single-borrower credit reports, on a sample of 10 loans, will pay $500 more in credit costs. With joints, it could be double that, he said.

“This is not a win for the industry, this is not a win for the homeowner. If the [bureaus] need to get some additional margin to keep their shareholders happy, they're going to increase their data prices even more,” the lender source said.

Shelley Leonard of Xactus said they’re working w/ FICO on being ready for the program’s debut in January. She said there are still too many factors yet to determine if there will be a cost savings.

“If we're thinking about it from the lender’s perspective, w/ the funded loan model, depending on their fallout rate from first pull to close, it could potentially save lenders a significant amount of money that they're spending upfront on loans that don't close,” she said. “But we need to get input from the bureaus to understand what the pricing components will look like for ‘26.”

The lender source said there’s no way the bureaus take FICO’s power move lying down. “This just added kindling 🔥 to the fire, or a tanker truck of gas to the fire, because who's gonna lower prices?” he asked. “FICO just came and said, ‘Listen, we're stealing all the repositories’ profit.’ You're gonna have them come out and say, ‘OK, we gotta charge more for underlying data.’”

One permanent fix would be to allow customers to control their own data by authorizing permission & having a cap on the fee. Maybe in another lifetime…

That $9.4B deal to acquire Mr. Cooper ballooned to $14.2B(!) by the time it closed on Wednesday, making it easily the largest mortgage M&A deal in history. Mr. Cooper’s stock rose dramatically from the time of the March announcement. 

There were some industry skeptics who thought Rocket 🚀 overpaid for Mr. Cooper when it was under $10B, so $14.2B really turns some heads. The underlying deal fundamentals haven’t changed —> Rocket-Mr. Cooper is a $2T servicer w/ hedges for pretty much any market & more top-of-funnel potential than anyone not named Zillow.

But we’re not talking about a rounding error here. Mr. Cooper made about $286M in profits in the first 6 months of 2025, but the acquisition price grew by $4.8B(!) from March. Outside of Rocket, Mr. Cooper, UWM & Pennymac, would a single lender even go for $4.8B?

It’s still unclear where the Mr. Cooper servicing refi leads will be directed (probably call center?), but The Scoop has more details on Rocket’s growing distributed retail ambitions. One veteran retail LO in CA said a recruiter told him he’d be assigned/partnered with 3-6 Redfin agents from his territory. “They want to buy some credibility,” he said. “That’s my take.”

UWM inked a $115M deal to acquire the naming rights to the Phoenix Suns ☀ ️ arena. It will be known as Mortgage Matchup Center.

If The Scoop ever acquires naming rights to a stadium, it will be known as “The Loan Dome.” It’s just too good. FWIW, UWM said they didn’t have info on how many loans have come directly from Mortgage Matchup, but clearly Mat Ishbia believes the visibility will help mortgage brokers.

The Trump administration is Big Mad at NY AG Tish James. They’re so mad that they’re forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to abandon their presence in NYC. Seriously.

"We are shutting down the two New York offices for Fannie & Freddie as a result of Letitia James' corrupt & dangerous business practices in the state," a source close to the FHFA told Fox News. The GSES will still be buying loans on NY properties, to be clear. I’m told these are regional offices for the GSEs w/ a concentration in multifamily lending.

Speaking of the Trump administration, officials said they expect to fire “thousands” of workers due to the government shutdown. My guess is HUD’s going to be eating cat 🙀 food by Christmas. And the Friday jobs report that is pretty critical to seeing where the economy is…well that ain’t happening.

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