About the Event
The use of utility, telecommunications, and rental (UTR) payment history in mortgage underwriting has attracted recent policy attention as a potential strategy to reduce the nation’s persistent homeownership and wealth gaps. Such data show how households manage their monthly expenses and could be particularly important for evaluating consumers who have little or no traditional credit history, including disproportionate numbers of households of color, consumers with low incomes, young adults, and recent immigrants.
Building on their report about the use of utility, telecommunications and rental payments history for credit underwriting, FinRegLab and the Urban Institute hosted a webinar in April 2022 to examine the current state of play and the evolving policy landscape. Leaders from the field discussed data access and quality and how to build more robust scoring and underwriting models.
Opening Remarks
Janneke Ratcliffe, Vice President for Housing Finance Policy, Urban Institute
Overview of the Join Report
Kelly Thompson Cochran, Deputy Director, FinRegLab
Michael Stegman, Nonresident Fellow, Housing Finance Policy Center, Urban Institute
Keynote Speaker
Teresa Bryce Bazemore, President and Chief Executive Officer, Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco
Panel 1: Building Better Models (With New and Old Data)
Speakers
Michael Akinwumi, Chief Tech Equity Officer, National Fair Housing Alliance
David Battany, Executive Vice President, Capital Markets, Guild Mortgage
Phillip W. Bracken, Managing Director, Government and Mortgage Industry Relations, VantageScore
Lester Firstenberger, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, AiCurio
Scott Zoldi, Chief Analytics Officer, FICO
Moderator
Georgia Kromrei, Senior Mortgage Reporter, HousingWire
Panel 2: Data Access Issues
Speakers
Samir Goel, Cofounder, Esusu
Jason Gross, Cofounder and Chief Executive Officer, Petal; Chief Executive Officer, Prism Data
Talia Kahn-Kravis, Senior Manager, Innovations and CDFI Fund, Credit Builders Alliance
Shawn Rife, Head of Risk Scoring and Financial Inclusion, Experian
Chi Chi Wu, Attorney, National Consumer Law Center
Moderator
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, National Housing and Economy Correspondent, USA TODAY
