In particular, Camino Financial has taken advantage of the secure, resilient infrastructure and solutions offered by AWS to create its own alternative to the FICO score: the Camino Score. Most lenders in the United States rely on FICO scores when evaluating applications, and FICO scores can determine everything from the interest rates offered to whether credit is extended at all.
“Roughly a third” of Camino Financial’s customers don’t have a FICO score, which can make them invisible to lenders, Salas said. “Recognizing that these are very creditworthy borrowers, we realized very quickly that we needed to develop our own score.”
The Camino Score can “better predict positive and negative outcomes for credit, let alone enable us to score those that didn’t have a FICO score in the first place,” Salas noted. In addition, it’s “more accurate than FICO within the segments that we’re focused on, and it enables us to convert deals that would otherwise be rejected in the absence of having a FICO.”
Reaching Overlooked Businesses With
The Camino Score
Not only is it more accurate than FICO within the segments that we're focused on, but it also enables us to convert other deals that otherwise would be rejected in the absence of having a FICO.”
Now Camino Financial, which runs its own tech blog, is expanding from working directly with customers to helping other institutions, offering what it calls “financial inclusion as a service.”
The company will be moving from offering credit directly to borrowers to helping other institutions provide affordable credit to overlooked market segments. “As I think about the future, we are a fintech company today, we will be a fintech platform in the next five years,” Salas said.
“We couldn’t be able to do it, while keeping the costs down, without leveraging the infrastructure, the cost-effective infrastructure that’s available via AWS,” he said.
Pivoting From Borrowers
To Institutions
Transforming
For Growth
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