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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.
Read a transcription of our conversation below.
FINTECH ONE-ON-ONE PODCAST NO. 505 – Christian Widhalm
Peter Renton:
Welcome to the Fintech One-on-One Podcast. This is Peter Renton, Co-Founder of Fintech Nexus and now the CEO of the Fintech consulting company, Renton & Co. I’ve been doing this show since 2013, which makes this the longest running one-on-one interview show in all of fintech. Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. Now let’s get on with the show.
Today on the show, I’m delighted to welcome Christian Widhalm. He is the CEO of Bloom Credit. Now Bloom Credit is a super interesting company. They are in the credit data infrastructure space. And if you don’t know what that means, you will certainly by the end of this interview. They interface between the credit bureau and the lender. And they make credit bureau data more easily consumable to the lender and vice versa. The furnishing of credit data back to the credit bureau, they make it that much easier as well. And they’ve got a new product, which we go into in some depth called Bloom Plus, which really dives into a bank account’s history the last two years of information. And it looks for trade lines, and we talk about how it works. I think it is a game changer for many banks, credit unions, and fintechs where you can help your customers build their credit without actually having to go into debt. Super interesting discussion around that. Anyway, it was a fascinating discussion. Hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to the podcast, Christian.
Christian Widhalm: Thank you for having me, Peter.
PR: My pleasure. Let’s start by giving listeners some background. I first met you when you were at LendKey, and I know spent quite a few years there. But why don’t you go back into your career, hit some of the highlights that you’ve done to date.
CW: Yeah. So, you know, I’d been in fintech for 15 years. Before that, I worked in the business side of sports for a few years out of college and somehow stumbled into fintech, not knowing anything about it, not really fully understanding credit and all the different players that were in the market. So, it was a fascinating time for me to join. That was back in early 2010, and that was at LendKey. And I was at LendKey for 11 years. When I left there, I was a chief revenue officer. LendKey provides credit unions and banks with the ability to acquire new loans and new assets in a digital platform, targeting mostly younger demographics for the most part. A lot of student lending and student loan refinance; a little bit different than some of the other fintechs that were out there in terms of the fact that we were partnering with banks and credit unions in order to originate and then service those loans as well as provide some capital market services to them. So over my time there, I think we worked with 350 to 400 banks and credit unions. The CEO over there, Vince Passione, has definitely been a mentor to me over the course of my career and kind of threw me into everything over time. If there was something to be fixed or some problem, he was kind of like throw Christian at it. And ultimately that led to me probably my last six years or seven years building out all the client-facing functions and sales organization, as well as business development and marketing. A lot of interesting stuff over the time there, I really loved my experience. And honestly, I think that the one thing that Vince really helped me prepare for was really what it takes to serve the needs as a partner for regulated financial institutions, right? Taking that with me and, ultimately coming to Bloom Credit and looking to do the same with working with banks and credit unions here.
PR: Okay. So, you knew Matt Harris, the founder of Bloom Credit, right? Not the Matt Harris with Bain Capital, the other Matt Harris, just to be clear. So tell us a little bit about your relationship there and how Bloom Credit first got on your radar.
CW: Yeah. So Matt was a colleague of mine at LendKey. He used to always look at these problems about people that we’d say no to, right? In terms of credit. His thought was, “how do we actually make that experience better to try to get people back in to the funnel and get them later when they become credit eligible?” And ultimately he decided to leave LendKey and start Bloom Credit. He asked me to co-found it with him. At the time, the idea that he had was interesting, but it was more consumer-facing. And my background is B2B. I’m more of a B2B guy in general. So I passed on co-founding it with him. This was probably late 2016, but I wanted to help him because I really like Matt. He’s super smart. And I thought this was an interesting idea for him to pursue. So, I helped him with the initial models. I helped him with some early pre-seed pitch stuff. I coincidentally named it Bloom Credit. Then, I acted as an advisor and worked with him when he needed any help or advice on anything. Ultimately, after a few years of pursuing the consumer model, Matt was just seeing friction in the process of working with credit data that really led him to start to pivot the business, I think, in 2020 towards B2B. Shortly after, I think January of 2021 or so, I got a call to see if I was interested in coming in to be CEO of Bloom Credit. Matt had been in it for a bit, wanted a bit of a break. And it was a really interesting opportunity for me, specifically because I loved the pivot. Being in B2B fintech for 11 years before that, I’d seen the friction with credit data and the way that it was being used and transmitted within the ecosystem. And especially the timing, right? We’d been at this interesting convergence, probably since Plaid and everyone really started accelerating probably eight, nine years ago, with this convergence of traditional credit data. So stuff at the bureaus, that is payment information on consumers for loans and credit cards. But then also this whole thing of alternative data and cashflow, right? And looking at cash. And the issue is really that the rails for credit data were never really designed for this convergence of all this data being in the system. Metro 2, which is the format at which contributors of repayment data, so lenders, send their information to the bureaus, is 26 years old and doesn’t really accommodate a lot of the new alternative data that ultimately could go into the bureaus and also new types of payment products as well as just lending products like BNPL, buying out pay later, for example. In that there’s been a struggle to get BNPL reported. And part of it is because the bureaus and the scoring models were never really designed to take in BNPL data, which was paying for paying six monthly payments, not understanding potentially what was going to happen to credit scores of this type of behavior with consumers using those products. I looked at this as a really interesting opportunity to help redefine the infrastructure on how credit data gets from point A and, the lenders who have it, both traditional as well as alternative data that sits within their own systems and get that over to the major credit bureaus where we can put it into formats that meet the business needs and use cases for the bureaus because there is quite a chasm there between the data on one side and the way that the bureaus need to take it in. And the bureaus are ultimately the best path for dissemination of that type of credit data back to lenders to use it in the market with the idea that the more data that’s available on consumers, the more that you can actually expand access to affordable credit.
PR: Right. So let’s dig into that for a little bit because I want to talk about the credit data that you said has to be in this Metro 2 format. So are you able to stuff more data into that format? How is it actually working in practice?
CW: Yeah, Metro 2 as a format does have various types of data fields that ultimately can be transmitted. The problem is the formatting in which you get it from the contributor, the lenders over to the bureaus. So for example, we’ve launched a new product off the platform that we have called Bloom Plus, which allows for FIs to connect to their depositors’ checking accounts so that we can actually see what’s in a checking account and then convert those types of transactions, call it rent, telco, utilities, into trade lines that go to the major credit bureaus. So the Metro 2 format says, yeah, we added this thing called rent, we added this thing called utilities and telco, but typically the way that data would actually go for rent, telco, or utility payments before the type of solution that we are offering is by the landlord or the property management company directly sending data to the bureaus, right? And there’s not that many of them that ultimately do. It’s definitely not the majority of rent that is reported in the US today. And the same thing with utilities. It would come from the utility provider or from the telco provider. And a lot of those folks typically don’t report credit data unless there’s an issue, right? Someone goes delinquent, and they need to use it as a stick for collection purposes. But there are all sorts of data that resides within checking accounts that, if converted appropriately to meet the needs of the bureaus via Metro 2 and a delivery mechanism, can be very valuable data, not only for the consumers who can build credit history but also for lenders who actually now have more access to data to make more informed lending decisions.
PR: Right, right. So I do want to dig into Bloom Plus in a little bit, but I want to go back to when you started the B2B pivot, you talked about being this intermediary between the lender and the bureau. Tell us how that solution works exactly.
CW: So, Bloom is B2B credit data infrastructure. We’re an API platform that has bi-directional APIs to the major credit bureaus and our clients. So what does that mean? It means that clients can actually go and pull data through our platform for all three major credit bureaus. We standardize it so that it comes back to our customers in the same format so they don’t have to actually maintain translations and all these integrations with the bureaus themselves. And it makes it way easier for them to actually work with the data. And then on the return side, the other direction is furnishment, which is industry jargon for credit reporting. And that’s actually helping clients send data from their systems of record, whether it’s a loan management system or in the case of Bloom Plus, a checking account into the bureaus, right? And the way that that works, again, single API, our clients connect into our API with their system of record data. We take their raw data from their system of record. We transform it into formats that are going to be acceptable by the bureaus. But we also run, I think we’re now over 700 data quality and validation checks that we actually run on the data to make sure it’s as accurate as possible. But in addition to that, we designed the platform from the beginning to really address the modern needs that are actually happening with credit data and specifically for furnishment or credit reporting. There are a few of them. One is you want the data to be as accurate as possible, right? That’s why we run all those quality checks and whatnot. If you look at the CFPB, they put out a lot of announcements about their struggle with how much illogical data there is in the bureaus. Things like, hey, you’re showing that you’re 60 days delinquent, but the account was opened two weeks ago. How is that possible? There’s a lot of that type of data that just ultimately goes into the system. So accuracy is big. One of the reasons for that is because you have an interesting sort of impedance mismatch of all of these systems that 10,000 banks, credit unions, and others use on one side. It can be cores, the LOSs, then it flows into loan management systems. And not all of them are really looking at how do we actually report credit data the absolute best, right? They’re saying, how do we make the best loan origination system? Or how do we make a great loan management system?
PR: Right.
CW: But with all these different formats and everything, errors and things come through. So, one thing that we wanted to make sure of is that those errors weren’t happening. The next one is different types of data. So instead of making it all about like Metro 2 and traditional credit data, we made our system more agnostic so that we can flow alternatively. We can take in alternative data and then transform it and then flow it back to the bureaus to maximize how much data the bureaus have on consumers to get out into the market to help lenders make better decisions and expand access to affordable credit. The other part is speed. So the traditional credit reports and whatnot, they really go off a 30-day statement cycle. Data that’s actually inside the bureaus probably can have the 45-day stale or so. And so, we built our system in a way that can be near real-time. So, as soon as something is actually updated in a system of record within minutes, we can have that when our system transforms it and actually sends it to the bureaus. That can be new accounts being opened. It could also be payments being made, statuses of accounts. We think that real time will be critical in the future because everything else is kind of real-time. Remember when it was a big deal to have real-time credit decisions?
PR: Right.
CW: We’re still on 30-day lags on reporting credit data. And I think in the future, the more accurate, the faster it’s there, is going to be better for everybody, for the bureaus, for lenders, as well as for the consumers. So that’s effectively what we do bidirectionally and made it very modern in order to account for today’s needs, which are growing every day.
PR: So you’re providing data back to the bureaus in real-time or close in real-time. When you’re pulling a credit record for your lenders, it’s not going to have that real time data in it. Is it just for companies that actually work with Bloom Credit, then do you get the real time data back from the bureaus?
CW: The interesting thing about the real-time side is that we built it to accommodate it because we know that’s where things will go. And there’s certain repositories that can take stuff in real-time. The bureaus today don’t take real-time kind of payments coming through or statuses because they’re built more on a monthly cadence. It’s not that they can’t do it, but it’s also like, how do they display it? And I think that talking with the bureaus, they all want to get there, you know, and they’re trying to figure it out. But in reality, I think it’s a little bit of a timeline for them to do it because they need to really format it in a way that’s going to be easy for lenders actually to take that data in and understand it. But there are other repositories and folks that are working on stuff that actually do want data in real-time. So we built it to accommodate both. And we think that the bureaus will get there over time. And I think they have to get there over time because this is just going to be the direction that everything is going. If you’re making decisions off 30-day old data, why, if you don’t have to?
PR: Yeah. The reality is it should have already happened, in my opinion.
CW: I completely agree.
PR: They should have started this project 10 years ago and it should have been implemented five years ago. Anyway, I’m not going to bash the bureaus, I know they’ve got a challenging job. So then you’re working with lenders both bi-directionally. So they basically work with Bloom Credit to pull credit data to the format that they like, and then they’re furnishing it back. You’re not storing any data, right? It’s flowing through you to go to the credit bureaus, because what I’m wondering if you would have the situation where you’re working with a bunch of lenders, someone’s going to be pulling a record from the bureaus with data that you have provided real-time updates two days ago. You’re not really intercepting that and enhancing the credit bureau record, even though you know that this person was updated two days ago.
CW: So we do store because one of the things that we do as part of this is that we manage 24 months of payment history for all the files. So, we do store and have the information; it just depends on when it ultimately goes to the bureaus. That’s also one of the things: keeping 24 months of payment history and, if not more, gives us the ability to make sure that from an accuracy perspective, consumers aren’t getting hurt because that’s also a natural sequencing. If I know that the last three months, all the data that we’ve taken in and we’ve converted and reported showed a consumer being current, current, current, and now this next month, they’re showing up as 120 days delinquent from our lending partner, we know that there’s a problem and we flag it. We ask our clients to remediate it. And often our clients find systemic issues within their own systems that they need to fix. And I think that’s been a very valuable thing for clients indirectly, the audit that we perform to help them improve their own systems. And the reality is there are a lot of errors on credit reports that have just been out there. I think that about 34 % of consumers in the United States say that they identify at least one error on their credit report. So we think there should be a world where that shouldn’t be the case, right?
PR: It should be 1%.
CW: Yeah, it should be the highest levels of accuracy, and there shouldn’t be anything that is negatively impacting the report, like errors that are grossly negatively impacting the consumer and their ability to get credit or at least access to affordable credit. And so as part of all of that we really take a hard look at quality and accuracy. That’s one of the reasons that we store all this data.
PR: Gotcha. Okay. I presume you’re working with some fintech lenders, but are you also working with banks and credit unions? Who is using Bloom Credit today?
CW: Yeah. So we started with two categories of customers. One I would call is a direct customer. So that’s someone who is taking our infrastructure because they don’t want to integrate with the bureaus. They don’t want to maintain everything and they want to use really good, best in class, off the shelf software that they can enable their product team with. And so that’s somebody like Netspend, who is one of our clients. Large prepaid card issuer in the United States. They use us, they have their own direct consumers that they work with. Then there’s platforms like Marqeta, Imprint, LoanPro, those types of companies that ultimately want to provide their customers with the ability to have really good credit solutions that they can offer to their end customer, so they integrate Bloom in order to facilitate that. So again, they don’t have to maintain anything. All the rails run through Bloom on the credit data side.
PR: Gotcha.
CW: Those are on the fintechs. On the banks and the credit unions, we’re just actually now getting into banks and credit unions and that’s more with the Bloom Plus product going upstream into them.
PR: When you describe Bloom Plus, I think of Experian Boost. One, how is Bloom Plus different or is it different to Experian? I presume obviously you’re agnostic with credit bureaus, right?
CW: Yeah, we’re agnostic with credit bureaus. Look, credit bureaus are our partners. We work very well with them and we think they’re obviously a very critical piece of the underlying financial ecosystem within the United States. But what we built with Bloom Plus is similar to Experian Boost in terms of what the outcome is for the consumer, but we built it differently. So we built Bloom Plus in a way that’s completely B2B and allows any FI in the country the ability to offer the experience white labeled to their deposit base so they can keep sovereignty over their deposit customer without them going elsewhere to seek this type of a solution where they might be cross sold other products and services or paying a hefty monthly fee between $3 and $15 a month for some services to report certain types of things and really maintain the relationship with their customer. And the reality is that, and I always am blown away by this number, but there’s over a hundred million people in the United States that don’t have access to mainstream credit products or rates. About 50 million of those are subprime, so they’ve done something to impair their credit. But the other 50 million are thin file, no file, limited credit history, unscorable. That could be 18 to 24 year olds early on in their credit-building years. That could be immigrants with limited access to credit in the United States and subsequently have limited history in the United States. So it’s a real large population. You’re talking like 40 % of the eligible credit population, I think over 18 in the United States is around what the number is. And in order to solve that problem, the question is, how do you actually allow people to build credit without taking out debt? That’s always been the chicken or the egg, right? Like, do you actually do this? And so we’ve collaborated with one of the major credit bureaus, TransUnion, when we first launched our product. And the focus of it is there’s tons of data that exists within checking accounts. And if formatted correctly, treated correctly, and made sure that it’s done in the right way that’s actually very clear to the consumer, the consumer can permission their data from their checking accounts to be converted into trade lines with the major credit bureaus. And that’s exactly what we do. We basically show the consumers within their checking account all of their recurring monthly obligations that potentially will be accepted by the bureaus as trade lines. And then we get them to attest to them. Here they are: here’s your rent, here’s your telco, here’s your three utilities. Click the button, attest to it, and then within 24 hours, we will report that to the bureaus. The very interesting thing about this is the impact that it can have quickly to a consumer’s credit profile. Reason being is because we’re pulling 24 months of account history out of the checking account. So that if a consumer enables their rent to go through and their telco, let’s say, and they’ve been paying those out of their checking account for two years, within 24 hours, we will have sent that over to the bureaus, they will have ingested it, and then they will magically have two new trade lines with 24 months of history. So if you think about that compared to traditional credit builder products that you have to take out and then over time you’re building credit, you have the ability to make an immediate impact to your credit history as a consumer as soon as you enable these transactions out of your accounts to be submitted to the bureaus and converted to trade lines.
PR: I imagine not everything is converted to a trade line, right? Because when you go through a checking account, you might have Netflix, you might have ESPN Plus or whatever. So what are the actual trade lines? If you’re going to open a trade line at a bureau, I imagine they’re not really interested in Spotify, are they?
CW: Experian, I think, does accept those today. They accept things like Spotify, Hulu, and Netflix, stuff like that. That’s definitely not traditional. And I think that over time, there could be interesting stuff to show indicators of credit risk out of them. I think that right now it’s probably early for those types of things. So the key ones that are reportable that are going to have immediate impact on credit history and credit score are rent, telco, and telco can be either your own cell phone bill or it can be your Comcast extended e-bill for your home and things along those lines. And then your utilities: water, gas, and electric. So those are the five today that we are really looking for and then ultimately convert for the consumers into trade lines with the bureaus.
PR: Right, right. This brings me to the question that actually was the genesis of this interview. How do you enter into the credit system? What is the on-ramp that most people take, and is that the best practice? I posted on LinkedIn: I’ve got a son who’s about to turn 18, he’s going to start his financial journey. He’s a senior in high school right now. So he doesn’t really have any regular expenses. How should he build his credit rating? I got some really good feedback when I posted this on LinkedIn, and you shared feedback that there really hasn’t been to this point. Ok, you turn 18, here’s how you enter into the credit system. Here is the onramp that most people take that is the best practice to take. Some people are doing credit builders, some people try to get their own secured credit card. What you’re saying is about as good an idea as I’ve seen; although the average 18-year-old will not have a utility bill, they might have a cell phone bill, but what do you say to that question? How can new immigrants and new adults enter the credit system most successfully?
CW: I think it’s always tricky. I look at myself back when I was probably 18 or 19 years old. And I remember being on my college campus and getting solicited credit cards. I’m like, you’re going to give me a credit card.
PR: Yeah, they don’t do that anymore.
CW: Yeah, not after the CARD Act. But you know, all of a sudden you’re getting stuff that you don’t even know how to pay for or can afford. I think that especially for younger demographics, and it’s just me personally, I think one of the best things to do is just to figure out how to build credit without actually taking on debt that you might not be able to manage and really fully understand. After that point, you’re not under the wing anymore of mom and dad, and you might not be telling them that you have this credit card, right? And the ability, to your point, does every kid, or I call them kids, but does every 18 to 24-year-old necessarily already have a history of paying bills out of their checking account? Potentially not, but as they begin to enter into being more self-sustaining, there are clear ways for them to actually benefit from the bills that they already are paying that are never being reported, right? So rather than going and getting into debt and taking out products before you do that, because you’re going to get worse rates, you’re not going to have a credit history, and the people that give you credit won’t be at a rate of 12%, right? It’s going to be a lot higher. How do you flip that and start making more payments out of your checking account that can then go to the bureaus to establish that credit? And it’s the same for immigrants new to the country with limited history. So I think what we’re doing at Bloom Plus, but specifically just checking account transactions, is very interesting for those younger demographics to be able to start understanding their own bills, how they’re paying their bills, and getting insights into that, but at the same time, building credit history off of it. So that when it is time to start taking out that first card or getting that first product, one, lenders are going to see that you actually have trade lines that have been reported and hopefully get the benefit of them saying yes to you, but also yes with better rates than you otherwise would have received. And I think it also really helps the FI, right? Because if I’m an FI and you look at the average age of community bank and credit union customers in the United States, I think, is 53 or 54 years old, right? And the median age, I think of the US demographic, is 39 years old or something like that. They have potentially an existential problem, right? They need more access to new young customers to continue engaging with. And if you have a product like this, you can start engaging and get people actually to build credit out of a checking account. It’s hard to untangle that, right? You have to go somewhere else then and use it. I think that this is a very interesting opportunity for FIs to engage with these demographics. Even going back to more demo data, I believe that the max peak year from an age perspective for revenue generation for a bank customer, which is 46 years old. Once they’re over 46, they typically have finished most of their major purchases. A lot of things around interest or generating interest income off them. So that’s the peak year. And if the average age of a member or customer is 53 or 54, you have to figure out this problem, right? In terms of attracting this other generation of customers, how do you then use this as a tool to get them into those mainstream credit products that you’re going to make money off of but also act as a bridge to a lifelong relationship with the consumer?
PR: That makes sense. And for me, my son has a teen checking account with one of the major banks for four years. So he’s going to have history. And he’s got income coming in from his part-time job. And most of the outgoing is just eating fast food and stuff, which he has to pay for himself. But anyway, I digress. I want to switch gears a little bit. I’m running out of time. I want to talk about how you won Best in Show at Finovate Spring in San Francisco. Congratulations. I’m curious now that that was four-plus months ago; how has that helped Bloom Credit over the last four months?
CW: Yeah, so that was when we first announced the new product, and we were fortunate enough to win. I think we got the most votes of all 60 companies that presented which was very exciting. It also, in addition to being exciting, was very validating because the folks who were voting were largely banking credit union attendees, right? I think this was an affirmation that what we’re doing here with Bloom Plus is needed and resonates with industry executives. So that was one thing that was great. So we announced it then, and then we launched with our first launch partner, which is a credit unit out of the Philadelphia area, in late July to early August. We are moving out of that launch right now. And we have an interesting pipeline of some very large FIs, some that are far along in the process, who have shockingly moved very quickly. And I say that because I’ve been working with FIs for a long time, and typically, a sales process can be anywhere between 12 to 18 months, sometimes two plus years. Some of these folks have actually been moving much, much faster, which I think again is indicative of the positive reception to this product and how it can actually benefit FIs as well as their customers. So ultimately, it definitely gave us some visibility on what we’re doing, but it also validated the real need, especially afterward. After I got off stage, even before we won, I think I had 25 banking credit union folks lined up to talk and learn more about what we’re doing. So that was a really good reinforcement, right? That what we’re working on is the right stuff.
PR: Right, as you say, they are looking for things to attract a younger demographic because they know they have to, as you just pointed out. So, I can see how they could see this as one of the tools to help make that happen. Okay, so last question. What is your vision for Bloom Credit? Where do you think this is going?
CW: I think it goes back to when I first came on board and what I mentioned earlier. The first thing that I wanted to do was to build a modern platform that met the needs of today’s demands of credit data, meaning that it’s not just about looking at someone’s traditional FICO score based upon their loan and their credit card payments and whatnot. All sorts of different things can go into assessing someone for credit risk. The real opportunity is how you make rails and systems that can receive and transform raw data from various disparate sources and different types of data, take that, and transform it into literal pieces, bite-sized pieces that bureaus and others can use. And that was the first thing. How do we do that? And I think that we’ve done a really good job of doing that and establishing ourselves within the industry as a very good partner and a good player and collaborator with both clients and the bureaus. I think that over time, my vision for it is that we continue to expand to be able to bring in as much data as humanly possible, or maybe not even humanly, if it’s AI possible, to be able to go into the system so that everyone benefits as I said, the lenders, the bureaus, as well as the consumers. What I would like to do is be the de facto rails that credit data is transmitted on, again, to benefit everybody. There are folks out there that could potentially look at this and be like, how is that? Is what he just said going to impact me in my business negatively? Our whole point is that we think it benefits the entire ecosystem if as much stuff is out there as possible. And I believe everyone benefits when there is a single standard that’s doing it with and also developing a new standard of care at the same time for the data as well as making sure it’s accurate and in the best interest of all parties, especially the consumers.
PR: All right. Well, we’ll have to leave it there, Christian. It’s really interesting to hear the story here; congratulations on your success this year, and best of luck in the future.
CW: Thank you so much for having me on.
PR: Well, I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you so much for listening. Please go ahead and give the show a review on the podcast platform of your choice, and go tell your friends and colleagues about it.
Anyway, on that note, I will sign off. very much appreciate you listening and I’ll catch you next time. Bye.