Nova Credit, the Fintech unlocking opportunities for “mainstream” and credit excluded consumers and the companies looking to serve them, has launched its latest product, Cash Atlas – “a first-party cash flow underwriting solution that transforms bank transaction data into a Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) consumer report, informing businesses’ lending decisions by painting a more holistic view of consumers’ financial health.”
In the U.S. alone, over 50 million consumers “are credit excluded because they don’t use credit in conventional ways.”
Additionally, lending to mainstream consumers “has become threatened by economic and technological instability from a looming recession, disruption from Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) products, and COVID-19’s impact on credit score effectiveness.”
While traditional credit bureau data has been the anchor data source for measuring risk in the industry for years, it “leaves gaps in assessing a consumer’s complete financial situation and limits opportunities for businesses to offer services to large portions of the population.”
Nova Credit’s Cash Atlas provides “a 360-degree view of a consumer’s financial profile across the credit spectrum, including prime, near prime, and credit excluded consumers.”
It gives consumers the power “to share an unparalleled view into their financial situation by connecting consumer-permissioned financial data points, such as bank transaction data in their checking and savings accounts.”
Cash Atlas™ compiles this data – “including net inflows and outflows, overdraft, debit transactions and generally how consumers manage their finances – to provide businesses with an actionable intelligence that is unavailable in traditional credit reporting and needed to understand consumer affordability and likelihood to pay.”
With this more complete picture, financial institutions, for example, “can fairly evaluate consumers to provide wider access to credit.”
Bruce Weinstein, CEO of Genesis Financial Solutions – Cash Atlas’s flagship customer and a leading provider of near-prime consumer financing solutions, stated:
“When we learned about Nova Credit’s Cash Atlas™, we were drawn by the product’s ability to help give customers, who are often turned down by prime lenders, a second chance to access the financing they need while improving the company’s risk assessment and prediction.”
Sarah Davies, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Nova Credit, remarked:
“At this point in the economic cycle, there is so much instability and more unknowns yet to come. Cash Atlas™ comes at a critical time to support lenders as they navigate this tumultuous lending landscape. It provides the necessary toolkit to holistically manage credit risk for mainstream and credit excluded consumers by clarifying for the lender whether the consumer has the capacity to afford a loan based on the financial health of their bank account and also whether the consumer is likely to repay the loan given the availability of funds.”
Misha Esipov, co-founder and CEO of Nova Credit, said:
“Though traditional credit data-based underwriting practices provide a strong barometer for decision makers, they have unintentionally excluded a broad swath of consumers from credit and financial services. This in turn has denied millions of worthy Americans the opportunity to set a strong foundation for their financial future.”
Esipov added:
“Nova Credit’s mission is to power a fair and inclusive financial system for the world. While our dream started by helping newcomers to the U.S. bring their own credit history with them upon arrival, we uncovered an opportunity to help those within the U.S. to tap into their financial data for the betterment of their financial future. Cash Atlas™ is our next step to help consumers and the businesses that serve them to unlock access to more data to tell a more complete and accurate picture of a consumer’s financial makeup.”
Nova Credit is on “a mission to accelerate financial inclusion and help underserved communities gain access to mainstream credit.”
The consumer-permissioned credit bureau “helps U.S. newcomers to use their international credit history to apply for credit cards, auto loans, rental properties, and more with the Credit Passport™.”
Through this offering, the company has “built partnerships in over 20 countries to gain consumer-permissioned access to over 1.1 billion credit profiles.”
Today, Nova Credit has “expanded to serve all who feel discouraged by the current financial system with its latest offering, Cash Atlas™.”
The company partners with financial services and tenant screening companies “like American Express, Verizon, MPOWER, SoFi, and Yardi.”
Founded by immigrants, Nova Credit has offices in San Francisco and New York City, and is “backed by leading investors including Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, and Index Ventures, as well as executives from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi.”