MBA Statement on FHFA's Announcement of its Credit Scoring Implementation Plan

WASHINGTON, D.C. (September 11, 2023) — Bob Broeksmit, CMB, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), issued the following statement regarding today’s Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announcement of updates to its implementation plan for the GSEs’ adoption of FICO 10T and VantageScore 4.0 and bi-merge reporting requirements:

“FHFA’s reformulated implementation plan is an acknowledgment of the significant operational complexities and the magnitude of this effort on the housing finance system, consumers, and investors of mortgage assets. MBA has advocated for a longer implementation timeline, and we appreciate FHFA taking our recommendations to heart.

“A comprehensive and collaborative process is necessary for these efforts to succeed, and it’s our hope that the stakeholder forums announced today will lead to sufficient time for robust data transparency and more opportunities to provide feedback.

“We continue to support FHFA’s efforts to ensure better competition in the credit scoring space and will work with them to ensure unintended consequences are mitigated and that costs, complexity, consumer impact, and policy implications are taken into consideration.”