Access and Opportunity with Carla Harris: Building Credit for Immigrants

December 8, 2022

Source: Access and Opportunity with Carla Harris

A recent survey commissioned by Nova Credit found that nearly half of immigrants said a U.S. credit card is hard to obtain. Without a credit card or any type of credit history to their name, immigrants are likely to find themselves identified as “credit invisible” and unable to establish their financial identities. On this episode, we learn from those with firsthand experience navigating the American credit system as immigrants and how they’re channeling lessons-learned into solutions that are making the pool of creditworthy people more inclusive. First, we hear from Kristy Kim, co-founder and CEO of TomoCredit. As a young South Korean immigrant, Kristy was unable to get approved for a car loan simply because she didn’t have credit history. This sparked her idea to create Tomo, a credit card for those with no credit or poor credit that aims to help them build a better score, faster. Then, host Carla Harris is in conversation with Wemimo Abbey and Samir Goel, two business partners who were inspired by their own immigrant-centered upbringings to break down the barriers that not having a credit score poses. Through their company Esusu, Wemimo and Samir developed technology that shares monthly rent payments with the three major credit bureaus, expanding the types of reportable data used to help immigrants build their credit score.

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