Members of Navy Federal Credit Union can now build their credit scores through rent and utility bills, thanks to the credit union’s work on consumer-permissioned data sharing. Navy Federal is offering its members the ability to report recurring payments to credit bureaus. This can enable consumers to qualify for credit from lenders that accept the information. The credit union partnered with Bloom Credit, a credit data infrastructure platform, to offer its consumer-permissioned data product Bloom+ to its 14 million members as a checking account feature in late March. Bloom+ gives financial institutions the ability to offer their customers an option for reporting existing payments from their checking accounts, such as rent and utility payments, as tradelines to TransUnion. Bloom Credit also works with Equifax and Experian for other products, but TransUnion is currently the only receiver of consumer-permissioned data shared through Bloom+. As consumers build their credit score using this cash flow data, they can qualify for better loans even if their traditional credit history isn’t strong. “Credit bureau data can often work to the detriment of consumers that have never held a loan of any kind before,” Justin Zeidman, vice president of strategy at Navy Federal, told “One of the great things [about] consumer-permissioned data sharing is it allows the credit bureaus to treat a rent payment very similarly to the way it would treat a mortgage payment from the perspective of credit history. It allows the credit bureaus to see and track the responsible behavior of consumers who would have otherwise been completely invisible to the bureaus.” Zeidman believes that consumer-permissioned data sharing and cash flow-based underwriting carry several benefits specifically for individuals serving in the military, Navy Federal’s primary member base. “Enlisted members often join the military quite young,” he said. “These are members that are sometimes 18 years old and receiving consistent paychecks with no credit history. “These members are often looking for housing as they move from location to location, and access to credit can become incredibly important to ensure costs and driving up fee income in corporate and investment banking as well as wealth management. “For San.tander, the U.S. has been better performing than [it has been for] competitors,” Journois said. As part of its initiative to expand its scale and attract more deposits, Santander recently announced a multiyear partnership with Verizon that allows eligible Verizon customers to open a high-yield savings account through Openbank. The deal provides the bank with a new pipeline of deposits and rewards Verizon customers with credits toward Verizon mobile and 5G home internet bills. Securing similar partnerships is something that Santander is “absolutely looking to do,” Riley said. The development of Openbank is a chief focus for Riley. As part of Openbank’s evolution, the digital platform is expected to offer checking accounts and certificates of deposits to customers by the end of the year, Riley said. The first Openbank-branded branch is scheduled to open later this month at Miami Worldcenter, a new retail and entertainment hub. Other sites may eventually follow in certain high-growth, high-density areas such as Southeast Florida, across the Sun Belt and into California, she said. Openbank, which requires a minimum deposit of $500 to open a savings account, is currently paying an interest rate of 4.4%. That’s down from the 5.25% rate paid in October. Riley said the company is set on maintaining a “top quartile rate position” in order to draw deposits. “That’s been a key feature … since launch and it’s one we stand fully behind,” she said, noting that Openbank deposits are “replacing vastly more expensive sources of funding” in the bank’s consumer lending business. “We’ve got, probably relative to many others who are operating in this high-yield savings space, a significantly better opportunity to manage that spread margin.”