Nova Credit – a data analytics company enabling businesses to grow responsibly by utilizing alternative credit data – recently announced it raised $45 million in Series C funding. This funding round helps Nova Credit to further broaden its product offering beyond cross-border credit reporting and scale Cash Atlas, the industry’s leading solution for cash flow underwriting and verification of income and employment. This expansion enables the company’s partners to grow within risk appetite by incorporating an expanded suite of open finance data pipelines, unique datasets, and category-defining analytics and compliance applications.
Since raising a Series B funding round in 2020, Nova Credit grew revenues by 10x and partnered with dozens of innovative companies, including HSBC, Verizon, Scotiabank, Earnest, and Yardi. And the company has accelerated international expansion, bringing its products to service newcomer corridors destined for Canada, the U.K., the U.A.E., and Singapore. Plus, Nova Credit has more than tripled volumes since the start of this year. With strong expertise working with consumer credit data, the Nova Credit team is ready to maintain this momentum by introducing a whole new range of solutions ranging from new-to-credit and thin-file underwriting to customized KYC and verification solutions.
Open finance has unleashed an era in which any business that extends credit can understand its customers in a more personalized and tailored way. Cash flow underwriting is a powerful application of open finance that fills in the gaps where traditional credit reporting is limited or absent to underwrite over 60 million new-to-credit, new-to-country, and other thin-file consumers. But unlocking the full potential of cash flow underwriting requires a unique set of capabilities that must be purpose-built for credit and compliance professionals. Central to these capabilities are bank-grade infrastructure and analytics that generate differentiated, reliable, and compliant insights from datasets across many consumer, alternative, and traditional sources.
For more than seven years, Nova Credit perfected the art and science of harnessing the power of open finance to enable leading institutions such as American Express, HSBC, SoFi, Scotiabank, and Verizon to grow responsibly. Through the Credit Passport, the company built data pipelines into credit bureaus worldwide, seamlessly translating a range of data schemas, attributes, and scores into FCRA-compliant reports for lenders to reach new-to-country populations. At the same time, it built a proprietary analytics layer that helps credit professionals extract value from new data sources – all within a compliance framework that meets the regulatory and security standards of premier financial institutions.
Nova Credit’s unique combination of data, analytics, and compliance (coupled with streamlined onboarding and credit workflows) delivers a one-of-a-kind infrastructure layer that helps lenders build superior products with the best that open finance has to offer. And Nova Credit has developed the world’s foremost expertise in credit data connectivity, standardization, analytics, and compliance required to unlock the power of open finance to benefit a broader base of consumers and lender use cases. The vision behind this winning combination is also shared by lead investor Canapi Ventures, who is backing Nova Credit to become the leading data analytics player in the cash flow underwriting space. The additional investors include existing backers General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Y Combinator, and Avid Ventures, and new investors Geodesic Capital, Harmonic Capital, Radiate Capital, and Socium Ventures (Cox Enterprises).
KEY QUOTES:
“Open finance data has been available for decades, but the industry has failed to assemble it into a suite of products that lenders can easily use to improve their customer onboarding and credit workflows. For years, Nova Credit has pioneered the use of consumer-permissioned data to enable the world’s most reputable businesses to approve more customers without compromising their risk and compliance standards. While cross-border credit remains critical to our strategy, we’re excited to broaden our offering and tackle a new set of industry challenges long unsolved. This new capital fortifies our position to continue being a dependable partner to the many banks and lenders we serve and accelerates the pace of innovation in an industry very much in need of change.”
— Misha Esipov, Co-founder and CEO of Nova Credit
“The credit landscape is evolving quickly right before our eyes. Winning solutions must strike a delicate balance between credit data and regulatory expertise, rapid product agility, and uncompromising enterprise reliability. Over the last few years, Nova Credit has demonstrated time and time again its ability to transform complex credit data challenges into scalable industry solutions that are leveraged by financial partners to expand the aperture of customers they can serve. Nova has assembled the team, tech, and vision to usher in cash flow underwriting at scale. We could not be more excited to double down alongside this roster of investors in supporting Nova.”
— Jeffrey Reitman, General Partner, Canapi Ventures
