Hi everyone - this is Where Credit’s Due - Tearsheet’s podcast covering the latest trends in lending. I’m your host Iulia Ciutina, senior reporter at Tearsheet, welcoming you to our very first episode.

Today we’ll be discussing how fintechs are helping immigrant communities to get access to credit, speaking with the chief executives of Nova Credit and Tomo Credit, Misha Esipov and Kristy Kim.

As credit history typically stops at the border, many people who move to the US from abroad have to build consumer credit from scratch. Nova Credit wanted to address this problem and created an alternative score to assess foreign residents’ creditworthiness based on their home country credit data.

At Tomo Credit, founder and CEO Kristy Kim created a technical underwriting solution that would allow immigrants and others without a credit history to build a credit score. Unlike other major credit cards, Tomo doesn’t require a credit score and works independently of FICO.