By Sabrina Karl

One of the excellent personal finance developments of the past decade is the easy access consumers now have to their credit reports and scores. While in the past, you needed to request a paper copy of your report and it didn’t show your score, the internet and financial apps now make it easy to see your credit score at a moment’s notice.

But with this new information can come some confusion if you apply for a loan. Namely, you may think your score is one number, but then find your lender is making their decision based on some other credit score. What gives?

It’s a common misconception that we all have one or maybe two scores assigned to us. But in truth, you could have as many as a dozen or more different scores. One underlying reason is that there are three credit scoring agencies in the U.S. Whether your lender pulls from Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion, they will get slightly different scores.

Additionally, some lenders draw a consolidated score that combines all three agency scores into a single number. Still other lenders use the data from these agencies but feed it into an in-house scoring formula.

Another reason is that different lender types prefer different formulas. For instance, mortgage lenders will choose a scoring model tailored to predicting mortgage default risk while auto lenders and credit card companies prefer a slightly different weighting of factors.

Your lender may also be using a more updated score than you saw, if it’s been some time since you last checked.

In any case, almost every scoring model gives the most weight to your on-time payment history, with the next two most important factors being how much debt you hold compared to your limits and how long you’ve had a credit history.