Verge.Capital tell us about their aspirations for Data Pitch and beyond.

Currently, tools and methodology for assessing credit scores are outdated, which leads to many people across the EU being unfairly denied access to credit facilities.

Ireland-based startup Verge.Capital is developing next generation credit scoring models that enable fair access to credit for all EU citizens and portability of credit scores. We spoke to Co-Founder Yiannis Giokas about their plans for Data Pitch.

What do you hope to achieve on the Data Pitch accelerator?

We hope to gain a better understanding of how to build viable business models that improve our lives using data in ways that comply with privacy and regulatory requirements.

What shared data will you work with and how will you use it?

We are working on payment accounts transactional data, as defined by the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), from two major European financial institutions.

We are taking part in the Finance Challenge (overcoming the data challenges in the financial sector). We’ll use the data to create a credit scoring mechanism that enables consumers and financial institutions to universally assess affordability and an individual’s creditworthiness of individuals, while empowering their financial well-being, mobility and financial inclusion.

Why do you think it is important for startups to work with large scale data providers?

Large scale data providers possess vast amounts of data, which, in many cases, are either neglected or under-used. Startups are hungry to create value, to disrupt industries and to succeed, so they can reveal the true value of these datasets in a win-win scenario.

What’s the best thing about working with data?

The unexpected insights – often what you find out is very different from your initial assumptions!

If you could change one thing about the data ecosystem what would it be?

We would like to see enforced and uniform open standard API formats. In this way it will be easier for third party organisations to use them and create value.