Fintech One-On-One Christian Widhalm of Bloom Credit on building new credit data infrastructure
Oct 17, 2024
34:09
Despite all the advances in fintech lending, the way data has been furnished to the credit bureaus has remained largely unchanged for several decades. We still operate on a 30-day payment cycle with no allowance for real time data. Not to mention all the recent credit innovations such as BNPL and short-term cash advances. This is about to change.
My next guest on the Fintech One-on-One podcast is Christian Widhalm, the CEO of Bloom Credit. They have created a system that can work with cash flow data, can work with BNPL, can work with real time payment data, all while staying within the legacy confines of the Metro 2 data format of the credit bureaus.
In this podcast you will learn:
- How Christian helped the founder of Bloom Credit get things going.
- Why Bloom Credit pivoted from B2C to B2B.
- What convinced him to join as CEO in 2021.
- The problems with Metro 2, the 26-year-old credit bureau data format.
- How their solution works as the intermediary between the bureaus and lenders.
- How Bloom Credit works with real time payment data.
- Why they store the payment data themselves.
- The types of FIs using Bloom Credit today.
- How Bloom Plus works and how it is different from Experian Boost.
- How Bloom Plus can help people build credit without taking on debt.
- The key trade lines from a checking account that are reportable to the bureaus.
- How new immigrants and new adults can enter the credit system.
- Why this is such a great opportunity for community banks and credit unions.
- How winning Finovate Best in Show in May has helped Bloom Credit over the last few months.
- Christian's vision for Bloom Credit.
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