数以百万计的移民进入美国缺乏对成功重要的重要性：有记录的财务历史或信用评分。他们无法证明其对贷方的可靠性，他们发现很难租用公寓，租车或获得第一张信用卡。缺乏信用评分的移民试图在美国生活中立足。
It’s not only poor immigrants who experience inconvenience and hardship, says Misha Esipov, cofounder of an alternative credit scoring startup calledNova Credit. Even people with decent scores in their home countries become “credit invisibles” once they arrive here–consumers who can’t prove their viability to the mainstream U.S. financial system.
Based in San Francisco, Nova Credit is trying to fill the gap. For the last two years, it’s pursuing deals with credit bureaus in 15 countries to create a “credit passport”–a way of porting financial history data across borders. Its business-to-business dashboard makes immigrants visible once more, translating data stored abroad into a form that can be consumed by banks, telephone companies, and landlords here.
“数据库在世界各地的结构不同，它们的标准不同。但是，归根结底，他们捕获了基本相同的东西。对于消费者的信用信息，这是正面或负面的。” Esipov说。
Esipov says the credit bureaus are failing to serve to this segment because they’ve yet to invest in unconventional data, including data from foreign agencies. These days, many of these foreign groups use modern practices akin to U.S. standards, he says; there’s no need to distrust the quality of their information.
“这并不是说银行不好，或者信用局（没有数据）不好。但是目前有业务，监管和信息差距。”他在接受采访时说。“这是（贷方）产生影响并促进对市场不断增长且有吸引力的市场的财务通道的好方法。”
Esipov says foreign bureaus, which are a mixture of public and private entities, are motivated to work with Nova for different reasons–softer and harder. Some simply want to help fellow nationals make it in our country. Others see an opportunity to generate extra funds from their existing data (Nova pays for cooperation).
The founders, all Stanford graduates, have personal reasons for setting up the company. Esipov’s family came to the U.S. from Russia in 1990. His mother was denied a car loan for years for lack of a credit score, he says. Co-founder and COO Nicky Goulimis came here from Britain to take an MBA at Stanford. She was denied a credit card despite a solid history of paying off student loans and credit card bills.
今年夏天，诺瓦开始与MPower融资, a lender serving low-income domestic students, students here under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and international students who don’t fit traditional credit criteria. Nova’s data, covering countries like Mexico, India, Canada, the U.K., and Australia, covers 30% of Mpower’s customer base, it says.
NOVA去年从Y组合培养箱毕业，目前正在参加Financial Solutions Lab，是金融服务创新中心的孵化器，投资于促进金融包容性的初创公司。后者的投资为25万美元。就像传统的信用报告机构一样，它通过向贷方收取访问报告的费用来赚钱（希望它可以更好地保护个人数据免于泄漏到互联网上）。
Nova是试图通过收获非常规数据来增加财务获取的几家初创公司之一，无论是电话记录, social media,行为测验，或外国局档案。Esipov说，大型信用局缺少一个技巧，因为不挖掘传统的金融交易之外的更多信息。他说：“消费者提供的一些替代数据具有强烈的承保能力信号。”“只有这些信息的一部分被传统机构系统地捕获，它们落后于下一浪潮的数据使用和标准。”
Correction：This article has been updated to reflect the fact that Nova is pursuing deals in 15 countries, but has not yet signed them, and to update the list of countries from which Nova has data.