Commerce

Fintech presented as a lifeline for newly arrived immigrants

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“They immediately find themselves stuck in some type of second-class status,” Goulimis told CQ Roll Call, saying they often had to start generating US-oriented credit histories “from scratch.” Nova Credit says it can take up to five years to get a new personal credit history.

Nova Credit uses technology to find and share the financial history of newcomers who want to prove their creditworthiness to banks and other types of lenders. With the consumer’s consent, the company translates international credit data into an equivalent score in the United States and reports it in a format familiar to American underwriters, who use it to assess credit product applications. They use so-called alternative credit data. This data provides information that is typically not found in files and credit applications, such as on-time rent and utility payments, a consumer’s job, and banking transactions.

Goulimis, a visa holder who came from the UK to study at Stanford University several years ago, said Nova Credit was not just serving a ‘niche market’ but was helping run ‘a vital engine economy and banking sector ”.

The figures confirm this.

The United States by far has more immigrants than any other country in the world, according to data from the Pew Research Center. Pew says more than 40 million people living in the United States were born in another country, which is about a fifth of the world’s migrants. America’s foreign-born population reached a record 44.8 million in 2018. Most immigrants, 77%, are legally in the United States, according to Pew’s estimates based on census data.

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