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Sitting down with the CEO of Urjanet, a Utility Data Aggregator
This episode was recorded at the Money 20/20 event in 2019. On this episode, PaymentsJournal’s editor-in-chief, Ryan McEndarfer, sat down with Sanjoy Malik, chairman and CEO of Urjanet.
PaymentsJournal:
Sanjoy, thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode.
To start, let’s give our audience a little bit of an overview about your
company, Urjanet.
Sanjoy Malik:
Yes, thank you. Urjanet is a utility data aggregator. We are
connected to close to 7000 different electricity, gas, water, waste, and
telecom utilities, and we provide information and data from these utilities to
our customers, who may use it in the context of businesses or consumers. Our
data is all permission-based and qualifies to comply with things like CCPA,
GDPR, etc.
PaymentsJournal:
Excellent, thank you for that overview. Well, we’re here at
Money20/20. Did your organization have any big announcements coming out of this
event?
Malik:
Yes, we announced a deal with LevelCredit, LevelCredit as a
data furniture that is going to combine alternative utility data from Urjanet
along with the ranked data that they already collect. It is a data furnisher to
many financial institutions and credit rating agencies, so we are very excited
about working with LevelCredit and having it use our data. It is going to
integrate very closely with our APIs and will have access to millions of
consumers.
PaymentsJournal:
I’d love to get to a little bit more of the brass tacks of
that partnership there. Why specifically did Urjanet decide to partner with
LevelCredit, and what will this new partnership really enable for both
organizations?
Malik:
So, LevelCredit is one of the leaders in providing the kind
of data that it do, and it is not one not for many partners. Our data is being
used by many different businesses and partnerships. We have partnerships with
many different types of companies, including folks that provide data for credit
and lending, for ID verification, for processing payments, etc., and
LevelCredit happens to be a leader in that space. It is the primary and one of
the leading providers of rent information, so combining rent with utility data
makes a lot of sense and it has a richer set of data that it can then provide
to agencies are lending institutions.
PaymentsJournal:
Wonderful. Now, I’d love to hear your definition of
alternative data, as we’re talking a lot about it here. Also, when we use
alternative data, how much is it actually increasing consumers’ credit scores?
Malik:
Yes, that’s interesting. There isn’t really a line that can
be drawn between alternative data and non-alternative data. Alternative data is
just a term used for data that is in addition to the traditional data sets used
in financial services. The traditional data sets might come from your bank account,
it might be your checking account balances, your compensation, your network,
things like that, that are traditionally used to make credit decisions.
Alternative data goes beyond that. It may include utility data, rent
information, other types of payments you make, or other types of credit history
that you might have, which are not included in the traditional data set. This
is quite interesting, especially for certain categories of consumers. These are
consumers that have thin-files, or don’t have a lot of credit history. This may
include younger people who are just entering the job market, it may include
immigrants or people that have gone to non-traditional sources for loans: the
payday lenders, etc. 30-40% of consumers in the U.S. fall into this category,
and some reporting has been done related to use of this data. What we can say
is that if you have two years of payment history on your utility account, you
could potentially increase your credit score from 600 to 670, which is very
meaningful for somebody who’s trying to get a loan or mortgage. And of course,
it represents a great additional business opportunity for the lending
institution.
PaymentsJournal:
Excellent. Thank you for that. Now, for our last question
here, I’d love to get a sense of what other companies you’ve worked or
partnered with to help the underbanked or thin-file consumers and businesses
build their credit?
Malik:
Yes, so we have worked with many different companies and I
can speak about a few of them. We are working with lending institutions. We
have announced our partnership with Equifax, which is one of the leading credit
rating agencies. We are working with smaller credit rating agencies. An example
of that is eCredable. All of these companies and businesses are providing
credit risk assessment to lenders and banks and including alternative data.
Including utility data helps to address the needs of the folks that are not
part of the financial ecosystem. These are the folks that I mentioned before,
that may not have credit history or enough data to build a credit history. Our
data really helps with that. One of the things that has also happened is that
the regulatory agencies like the CFPB have come up with recommendations. What
they recommended is that alternative data is a good thing and should be used to
improve financial inclusion. This, again, represents a big opportunity for
individuals that can benefit from this, but is also a huge opportunity for the
businesses providing financial services that are providing the mortgages and
loans.
PaymentsJournal:
Thank you, Sanjoy, for speaking with me about your Urjanet
and alternative data. I hope to have you back on the podcast soon.
Malik:
Thank you so much.
The post Sitting down with the CEO of Urjanet, a Utility Data Aggregator appeared first on PaymentsJournal.
View all episodes
By The PaymentsJournal PodcastThis episode was recorded at the Money 20/20 event in 2019. On this episode, PaymentsJournal’s editor-in-chief, Ryan McEndarfer, sat down with Sanjoy Malik, chairman and CEO of Urjanet.
PaymentsJournal:
Sanjoy, thank you so much for joining me on today’s episode.
To start, let’s give our audience a little bit of an overview about your
company, Urjanet.
Sanjoy Malik:
Yes, thank you. Urjanet is a utility data aggregator. We are
connected to close to 7000 different electricity, gas, water, waste, and
telecom utilities, and we provide information and data from these utilities to
our customers, who may use it in the context of businesses or consumers. Our
data is all permission-based and qualifies to comply with things like CCPA,
GDPR, etc.
PaymentsJournal:
Excellent, thank you for that overview. Well, we’re here at
Money20/20. Did your organization have any big announcements coming out of this
event?
Malik:
Yes, we announced a deal with LevelCredit, LevelCredit as a
data furniture that is going to combine alternative utility data from Urjanet
along with the ranked data that they already collect. It is a data furnisher to
many financial institutions and credit rating agencies, so we are very excited
about working with LevelCredit and having it use our data. It is going to
integrate very closely with our APIs and will have access to millions of
consumers.
PaymentsJournal:
I’d love to get to a little bit more of the brass tacks of
that partnership there. Why specifically did Urjanet decide to partner with
LevelCredit, and what will this new partnership really enable for both
organizations?
Malik:
So, LevelCredit is one of the leaders in providing the kind
of data that it do, and it is not one not for many partners. Our data is being
used by many different businesses and partnerships. We have partnerships with
many different types of companies, including folks that provide data for credit
and lending, for ID verification, for processing payments, etc., and
LevelCredit happens to be a leader in that space. It is the primary and one of
the leading providers of rent information, so combining rent with utility data
makes a lot of sense and it has a richer set of data that it can then provide
to agencies are lending institutions.
PaymentsJournal:
Wonderful. Now, I’d love to hear your definition of
alternative data, as we’re talking a lot about it here. Also, when we use
alternative data, how much is it actually increasing consumers’ credit scores?
Malik:
Yes, that’s interesting. There isn’t really a line that can
be drawn between alternative data and non-alternative data. Alternative data is
just a term used for data that is in addition to the traditional data sets used
in financial services. The traditional data sets might come from your bank account,
it might be your checking account balances, your compensation, your network,
things like that, that are traditionally used to make credit decisions.
Alternative data goes beyond that. It may include utility data, rent
information, other types of payments you make, or other types of credit history
that you might have, which are not included in the traditional data set. This
is quite interesting, especially for certain categories of consumers. These are
consumers that have thin-files, or don’t have a lot of credit history. This may
include younger people who are just entering the job market, it may include
immigrants or people that have gone to non-traditional sources for loans: the
payday lenders, etc. 30-40% of consumers in the U.S. fall into this category,
and some reporting has been done related to use of this data. What we can say
is that if you have two years of payment history on your utility account, you
could potentially increase your credit score from 600 to 670, which is very
meaningful for somebody who’s trying to get a loan or mortgage. And of course,
it represents a great additional business opportunity for the lending
institution.
PaymentsJournal:
Excellent. Thank you for that. Now, for our last question
here, I’d love to get a sense of what other companies you’ve worked or
partnered with to help the underbanked or thin-file consumers and businesses
build their credit?
Malik:
Yes, so we have worked with many different companies and I
can speak about a few of them. We are working with lending institutions. We
have announced our partnership with Equifax, which is one of the leading credit
rating agencies. We are working with smaller credit rating agencies. An example
of that is eCredable. All of these companies and businesses are providing
credit risk assessment to lenders and banks and including alternative data.
Including utility data helps to address the needs of the folks that are not
part of the financial ecosystem. These are the folks that I mentioned before,
that may not have credit history or enough data to build a credit history. Our
data really helps with that. One of the things that has also happened is that
the regulatory agencies like the CFPB have come up with recommendations. What
they recommended is that alternative data is a good thing and should be used to
improve financial inclusion. This, again, represents a big opportunity for
individuals that can benefit from this, but is also a huge opportunity for the
businesses providing financial services that are providing the mortgages and
loans.
PaymentsJournal:
Thank you, Sanjoy, for speaking with me about your Urjanet
and alternative data. I hope to have you back on the podcast soon.
Malik:
Thank you so much.
The post Sitting down with the CEO of Urjanet, a Utility Data Aggregator appeared first on PaymentsJournal.