Kristy Kim
Podcast appearances as guest
Rethinking credit score with Kristy Kim (Episode 50)
In this episode, I sit down with Kristy Kim, CEO and founder of Tomo Credit.
On the podcast
Kristy founded TomoCredit in 2019 after finding she couldn't get an apartment or car loan in San Francisco because she had no credit score, despite having savings and no debt.
Kristy moved from Seoul to the US at 11 and started her career in M&A in San Francisco's Financial District, working on software company sales.
TomoCredit's first product used bank-account cash flow to create its own Tomo score and extend credit regardless of credit history.
TomoCredit hired modellers from Wells Fargo and Citibank to build an alternative underwriting model to FICO.
TomoCredit has more than 4.5 million customers, mostly in the US.
Most early TomoCredit customers were immigrants; now many are US-born people recovering from credit mistakes.
TomoCredit has rebuilt its product from scratch as a chat-style AI financial adviser, TomoIQ, now in beta.
Canada and the UK are TomoCredit's natural next markets.
In the US, credit starts from zero and must be built by borrowing, which catches out immigrants and people whose families don't understand credit.
About 80% of personal finance is simply knowing the rules, and your closest circle largely determines whether you do.