eCredable, The Consumer’s Credit Bureau, and Urjanet, the world-wide leader for utility data, announced a strategic partnership to provide extensive access to utility and telecom payment data that can be used in a variety of industries - most notably financial services. eCredable can provide this data to Consumer and Business Credit Bureaus, Lenders, and Credit Card Issuers desiring FCRA compliant data.

Utility and telecom payments fit into the category of so-called “alternative credit data” which has become top-of-mind with the financial services industry. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has indicated a strong desire to see companies leverage alternative credit data to create solutions to help consumers and small business owners who are “credit invisible” gain access to affordable financial services. Most utility and telecom companies do not report to the major credit bureaus, creating the need to acquire this valuable information with the assistance of the empowered consumer.

“Since 2009, eCredable has been helping consumers leverage everyday payments for bills like rent, utilities and telecom to build a credit score lenders can use in underwriting credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, and home loans,” said Steve Ely, CEO of eCredable. “Acquiring utility and telecom payment data efficiently and affordably is essential to solving the problem of helping consumers and small business owners demonstrate their creditworthiness, even when no traditional credit history is present. Urjanet helps us address this challenge.”

“Urjanet has built an expansive network of connections to more than 4,000 utility and telecom companies around the world,” said Sanjoy Malik, CEO of Urjanet. “The financial services sector operates under a myriad of complex regulations that must be adhered to, especially when handling consumer data. We are excited to help eCredable unleash the power of this data by working directly with consumers and small business owners who can benefit from sharing their payment histories with a wide variety of businesses that value this information very highly.”

eCredable leverages Urjanet technology to access how consumers and small business owners pay bills like gas, water, power, mobile phone, land line, internet, cable and satellite TV. This data has been demonstrated to be very valuable in understanding the creditworthiness of consumers with little or no credit history. There are an estimated 45 million adults in the U.S. who are not scoreable using traditional scoring methods that can benefit from including this information in their eCredable AMP Credit Score®. This will empower these consumers to access affordable financial products from mainstream financial service providers and avoid expensive loans from alternative providers.

There are 25 million small businesses that have less than 19 employees, of which 10 million have less than 5 employees. Small business owners typically rely on their consumer credit to apply for business lines of credit. When no credit history is available, they are also unable to apply for credit. Many small businesses (especially micro businesses with less than 5 employees) rarely have a business credit score. Having a business credit score would allow them to create some separation between their consumer credit history and their business credit history, avoiding penalizing the small business owner’s personal credit score.

Beyond powering the AMP Credit Score, eCredable intends to become “The Consumer’s Data Furnisher” and provide FCRA-compliant tradelines, reports, and scores to other Consumer and Business Credit Bureaus, Lenders, Credit Card Issuers, and Landlords. This patent pending process will allow these organizations to acquire additional information to further assess credit risk for all consumers and small business owners across the entire credit spectrum, from those consumers who have no traditional credit history up to, and including, consumers with a robust credit history.