UWM will now pull both a FICO score and a VantageScore 4.0 on every credit report it runs and qualify the borrower on whichever score is stronger, the Pontiac, Mich., wholesale lender said in an announcement on Oct. 6, 2026. The change takes the choice between the two scoring models out of mortgage brokers’ hands and makes the better outcome the default.
Until now, brokers working with UWM had both numbers in front of them and had to decide which to use. UWM said the new setup “automatically selects the best credit score returned for a consumer,” which it expects to deliver “the lowest payment, cheaper mortgage insurance and lower all-in fees and costs.” The company said early research indicates that pulling all available scores “could save many borrowers thousands,” but it did not publish that research or attach a dollar figure to the claim.
“Our goal is simple: put borrowers in the best possible position while making it easier for brokers to do business,” Mat Ishbia, UWM’s president and chief executive, said in the release. “No one should have to worry about which credit model wins. We handle that automatically by obtaining FICO and Vantage on all credit pulls to help consumers save more money and improve affordability, empowering brokers to close more loans.”
Why a second score can change the loan
A credit score is not just a yes-or-no gate in agency lending. It feeds the loan-level price adjustments Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge, the cost of private mortgage insurance, and in some cases eligibility itself. A borrower who clears the threshold on one model but scores higher on the other can end up with a materially cheaper loan on the same file.
UWM has put numbers on how often that happens. In a release dated Sept. 15, 2026, the lender said roughly 25% of its borrowers were “currently seeing a more advantageous credit result” when VantageScore 4.0 was used instead of traditional FICO, and that it expected the share to reach 2 in 5 by the end of that month. UWM described the effect as improved pricing, better loan-level price adjustments, cheaper mortgage insurance, wider eligibility and, in some cases, turning “what could have been a ‘no loan’ into homeownership.”
Those are the company’s own figures on its own book of business, not an independent measurement, and UWM did not say how large a scoring gap the typical borrower sees. The lender also describes itself as the first to offer VantageScore 4.0 when it became available this year.
A policy opening the lenders are racing through
The dual-score approach only became possible after federal housing regulators cleared a second scoring model for agency loans. According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s credit scores policy page, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began accepting VantageScore 4.0 from approved lenders on April 22, 2026, then expanded it to all approved lenders on Sept. 9, 2026, dropping the requirement for prior written approval. On Sept. 30, 2026, the two companies published fee adjustments that align their upfront pricing across Classic FICO and VantageScore 4.0. On our reading, that alignment is what makes an automatic best-score rule workable: with the fee grids level, taking the higher score no longer carries an offsetting pricing penalty. FICO 10T remains an approved model but is still not eligible for loan delivery, the agency says.
UWM used the announcement to credit that policy shift, saying FHFA Director Bill Pulte’s support for multiple credit models, “including the potential of a third model with FICO Score 10T, has had a positive impact on consumers, ultimately driving costs down.” Ishbia was more emphatic in September, calling the addition of VantageScore 4.0 “one of the best things that has come from FHFA in many, many years.” RealtyWire covered the moment the gates opened in Pulte’s directive clearing all Fannie and Freddie lenders to use VantageScore 4.0, which sent FICO’s shares down 16% in a single session.
UWM is also moving onto ground a rival staked out eight days earlier. Rocket Mortgage said on Sept. 28, 2026 that it would make VantageScore 4.0 its preferred model on all eligible loans during the fourth quarter, citing about four months of side-by-side testing. The two approaches are not identical: Rocket named a preferred model, while UWM says it will run both every time and take the higher result.
UWM calls itself the nation’s largest home mortgage lender and the largest wholesale lender for 11 consecutive years, originating exclusively through independent brokers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Whatever the per-loan savings turn out to be, applying the rule to every file at that volume makes the dual-pull the broadest test yet of whether a second scoring model measurably lowers what American borrowers pay.
It lands in an expensive market. Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed-rate average at 7.28% as of Oct. 1, 2026, up from 7.03% the week before and 6.34% a year earlier. Against a rate nearly a full point higher than last fall, a few basis points of pricing relief from a better score is one of the few variables a lender can still move. More mortgage coverage is on our mortgage page.
