Christian Widhalm of Bloom Credit on building new credit data infrastructure

Fintech One•On•One

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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