Within the financial services industry, there is an untapped market that is underserved because they do not meet most lenders credit criteria. This “credit invisible” market is comprised of millions of young Americans, most of whom have limited financial histories. However, new fintech innovations are expanding the data that can be used to determine creditworthiness and may hold the key to accessing the market potential of these consumers.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates almost 1 in 10 Americans have no credit history whatsoever. That is the equivalent of 26 million people that banks and credit unions have no access to, and no way to connect with. On top of that, an additional 18 million people are listed as not scorable by any available metric. This collection of people, many of whom fall with the Gen Z and Millennial demographic, represent the next generation of consumers, and the key to unlocking new opportunities for them lies in the use of academic transcript data, to provide a new meaningful indicator of creditworthiness.