Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Banking (as we know it) and the Underserved

One of Longitude's longtime clients recently engaged yours truly to run their credit bureau business. It's a great company with a bright future and attracts a great deal of attention from all constituents and sectors of the market. The business primarily serves lenders who successfully provide access to credit for consumers who are underserved or otherwise disenfranchised by traditional financial institutions (read banks) who continue to fulcrum their credit decisioning on traditional 'cut-off' credit scores.

I offer this backdrop only as a broad, abstracted context to the following article on FT.com yesterday on the topic of the poor and their money: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/4304f838-f7dd-11dd-a284-000077b07658.html. The author, Tim Harford, also blogs at The Undercover Economist (http://blogs.ft.com/undercover/). I think you'll enjoy his perspective and observations.