Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), took to the social media platform X on Monday to seemingly call out credit bureaus for their pricing.
“I do not understand what the credit bureaus are doing with their pricing — they are inviting a lot of scrutiny that is only intensifying by the day,” Pulte posted Monday afternoon.
In a separate post, Pulte said that the FHFA is “in receipt of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) letter about concerns with the Credit Bureaus” and had been in communication with the bureaus.
The FHFA did not immediately respond to HousingWire‘s request for comment.
The MBA’s concerns, which were expressed in a letter to Pulte on Dec. 12, 2025, include information from members who reported an increase in credit reporting costs for 2026. The hikes amounted to 40% to 50% on average and included “dramatic” price increases for the government-sponsored enterprises’ mandated “tri-merge” credit product.
The three major bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — collect financial and personal data to create consumer credit files. Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) provides the algorithm that turns this data into FICO scores, which are combined into a “tri-merge” report that mortgage lenders use to approve loans and set interest rates.
But there have been talks about a shift from the long-standing tri-merge report to a bi-merge version, especially after FHFA’s July 2025 approval of VantageScore 4.0.
TransUnion said in November that beginning in 2026, it would charge $4 per VantageScore 4.0, compared with FICO’s $10. Experian said it would offer the product free indefinitely, pledging future prices at least 50% below FICO’s. And Equifax said it would charge $4.50 per score through 2027 while providing it free to FICO customers through 2026.
A FICO spokesperson told HousingWire in November that “if lenders experience cost increases for credit in 2026, it will be a result of the bureaus increasing costs of the credit file data … to compensate for the lost revenue they previously received as distributors of the FICO Score.”
MBA president and CEO Bob Broeksmit has long criticized price increases. In November 2025, Broeksmit took to LinkedIn to say that “the credit reporting industry continues to abuse its government-granted oligopoly to line its pockets at the expense of consumers and lenders.”
Pulte wrote that his communications with the credit bureau CEOs were “falling on deaf ears.”
Following Pulte’s posts, Bloomberg reported that shares of Experian, Equifax, TransUnion and FICO all declined. Equifax stock fell as much as 6% on Tuesday, while TransUnion dropped 6.8%, FICO dropped as much as 4.9% and Experian lost 2.7% in trading.
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