cash-flow-underwriting
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Zoot Enterprises and the machinery of yes
A Montana software company makes the complicated business of credit decisions move faster. Its real trick is giving lenders room to change their minds.
Applied Data Finance bets a bank statement can change a lender’s mind
The company behind Personify is using cash flow data to reconsider borrowers conventional credit models overlook. Its experiment widened approvals - but access and affordability remain two different questions.
Tilt Wants Your Paycheck to Tell a Better Credit Story
The former Empower Finance is turning bank-account activity into access to cash and credit. Its bet: a thin credit file can hide a perfectly capable borrower.
Nova Credit
Nova Credit is a San Francisco-based credit infrastructure and analytics company that helps lenders extend credit responsibly to people traditional bureaus miss. Founded in 2016 by three Stanford classmates, it operates as a consumer reporting agency built around three products: Credit Passport, which translates a newcomer's international credit history into a U.S.-readable report; Cash Atlas, a cash flow underwriting tool that reads consumer-permissioned bank transaction data; and Income Navigator, which automates income and employment verification. Banks and lenders including American Express, HSBC, Chase, and PayPal use Nova Credit to reach credit-invisible and thin-file consumers.
Misha Esipov
Misha Esipov is the co-founder and CEO of Nova Credit, a San Francisco-based credit infrastructure company that translates international credit histories and consumer-permissioned bank data into underwriting decisions for lenders. Born in the Soviet Union and raised in the US, he founded the company in 2016 out of Stanford GSB after stints at Goldman Sachs, Apollo Global Management and Google. Nova Credit closed a $35M Series D in October 2025 led by Socium Ventures.