A stellar resume with top-notch skills aren’t enough to get you a job at Kunal Shah-led fintech firm Cred - you will also need a credit score of over 750.
"The intent is simple. If you are building products that are going to drive responsible financial behaviour, we have to live it first...We can't be driving this when we ourselves don't live up to this promise," Shah said during a company event on February 25.
"I would love to make (the threshold) to 800, but a lot of people are starting their careers early on. They cannot achieve 800 - they need credit age to be able to achieve that. But 750 is something that we want to ensure. And a lot of people who want to join and don't have a score, they have three months to get that done, and we actually help them actively to achieve that," Shah said.
While the practice is uncommon in India, many employers in developed markets, especially those dealing with sensitive and financial information and data, perform credit checks on job candidates.
Shah said many times it is not intentional that people have lower credit scores and in 80-90 percent of the cases, they don't know what has really happened. "Sometimes, we have discovered people had a loan account that existed in the credit bureau that they did not even apply for. Just disputing that, changing these things, allows them to achieve that"
On February 25, Cred debuted Svalbard, a suite of credit-focused experiences that includes helping consumers manage and improve their credit score. The firm currently allows only people with a credit score of 750 and above to sign up for its product.
While demoing these experiences, Cred's product head, Akshay Aedula, revealed that a low credit score had almost cost him this job six years ago. In fact, he said that 79 percent of the Indians have faced consequences due to a low credit score, since they "don't understand the system that controls their future"
As part of Svalbard release, Cred users can also pledge their mutual fund investments to secure digital credit lines at interest rates starting at 8.99 percent, a move that is expected to expand the lending ambitions of the Bengaluru-based startup.
Cred's total loan book has surpassed Rs 19,000 crore, Moneycontrol reported on February 5. Of this, Cred's NBFC arm Newtap Finance contributed 2.7 percent of the total managed Asset Under Management (AUM), with the remaining share coming from its six other lending partners. Lending is currently one of Cred’s core revenue streams, alongside payments and insurance.
Cred is also revamping its credit card management experience bringing a unified dashboard that consolidates statements from various credit cards into a single view.
It will offer a real-time monitoring system that tracks credit utilisation and provides a holistic view of spending patterns across all cards. The app will also feature a gesture based interface to make it easier for consumers to manage multiple cards.
These experiences are part of the company's push to make its offerings more personalised to India's affluent consumers.
Started in 2018, Cred was last valued at $6.4 billion when it raised $140 million funding led by Singapore's GIC and participation from Tiger Global, Sofina Ventures, Alpha Wave Ventures and Dragoneer in June 2022.
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