We’ve taken great strides as a society. Today we enjoy a longer life expectancy, expanded access to education, and live in a more peaceful world than our ancestors.
Despite these gains, social mobility remains stagnant. 3 billion humans cannot access basic credit services; and fewer than 9% of citizens in developing economies have ever taken a loan from a financial institution.
In many economies, generations of people are governed by a dark underworld of illegal lending — a pseudo-economy ran by gangsters and fraudsters. For these 3 billion people, the idea of accessing enough credit to buy a home or start a business is a pipe dream.
In countries rich and poor, access to credit is a fundamental cornerstone of social mobility. No matter your age, gender, language or nation, credit is the key driving force to boosting prosperity. From a newlywed couple looking to settle down and buy their first home, to an aspiring entrepreneur looking to start a small business, virtually every human on the planet depends on credit. It is the gateway to financial inclusion and ultimately financial freedom.
Credit Impacts All of Us
Credit issues are not limited to developing economies. 90% of top lenders in the United States use the FICO score, which the United States government considers a monopoly. Despite FICO’s market prominence, their credit scoring system leaves over 45 million Americans with no credit score.
In The United States, the most developed economy on the planet, millions of creditworthy borrowers are denied the right to own a home, start a business, or reach financial stability thanks to artificial scoring limitations imposed by central organizations.
- In China, your credit score is affected by your political opinions.
- France, Portugal, Spain and the Nordic countries do not have credit scores, opting to only report negative information to your file.
- In the United Arab Emirates, religious restrictions on lending have prevented the development of a consumer credit reporting system.
- In the United Kingdom, you will have trouble getting a high credit score if you are not registered to vote.
These issues are present around the world.
The credit problem is a fundamentally interesting one because it involves a market that is incredibly unequal and blatantly opaque. Despite the fact that these inefficiencies squander the potential of billions, nobody questions the status quo of credit. In a world of globalization, the credit industry is far from global.
- You should not have to rebuild your credit from scratch when you move to a new country
- Billions of people around the globe should not be forced to take out dangerous, informal loans
- Governments should not lower your score because of your political affiliation, or require that you register to vote to have a high score
- 45 Million Americans should not be deprived of their right to own a home or start a business
- Individuals new to the credit system and fiscally conservative people should have alternative ways of showing creditworthiness beyond incurring a high amount of debt
- 3 billion people around the globe deserve to have access to basic credit services
The credit problems are artificial problems. We are tired of hearing “well that’s just the way it works” when discussing the current status of lending.
This is why we are launching Bloom.
Built on Ethereum and IPFS, Bloom brings credit to the modern age. We’re developing an end-to-end protocol for identity verification, risk assessment and credit scoring, entirely on the blockchain.
Bloom is not a lender, but a platform.
Bloom is a standardized, programmable ecosystem to facilitate on-demand, secure, and global access to credit services. Bloom offers solutions to cross-border credit scoring and identity fraud while at the same time expanding credit globally to 3 billion new individuals and improving scoring methodology for all 7 billion people.
Bloom is not a provider of loans. Bloom is a platform to migrate all lenders to the Blockchain. From mortgage providers to local credit unions, lenders across the globe will be able to tap into a far more comprehensive credit database and expand their market to three billion new borrowers.
Bloom is the future of credit.
Our team has spent years in identity and data science. From fundamental research at Stanford University to large-scale entity extraction for deterministic and probabilistic record linkage, we’ve been deeply tied into identity for years. It’s time to take the next step.
Let’s build a better future together.
The Bloom Team,
Jesse Leimgruber, Alain Meier, John Backus, Ryan Faber