Throughout Climb’s history, we’ve prided ourselves on creating inclusive financing options for students pursuing career-advancing education. To further this goal, we’ve partnered with industry experts to use credit bureau data to create a new, alternative loan underwriting model, in order to address the disparate impact traditional credit scoring models have been shown to have across various demographics.
With a more comprehensive look at applicants, the ML model can expand credit access safely — it generates a more accurate risk assessment, while reducing the weight of variables that have been shown to correlate with race, gender, and ethnicity. Because of this, we’re able to open the doors for more people to access the financing they need for their education, which enables more people to enroll in career-advancing programs.
At Climb, one of our values is to iterate and experiment, so we aim to continuously improve the experience for every person who applies for a Climb loan. The Climb Credit Score is just one of the innovations we have implemented to continuously serve our mission of expanding access to career-advancing education.