TransUnion Announces Minority Investment and Strategic Partnership with Omnisient to Accelerate Alternative Data Adoption

TU Omnisient signing

TransUnion today announced a minority investment and broader strategic partnership with Omnisient, a South Africa-founded FinTech operating internationally that offers a privacy-preserving data collaboration and advanced analytics platform. The Omnisient platform empowers businesses to safely access high-value consumer data ecosystems and rapidly integrate alternative data sets to drive intelligent decision-making. As part of the investment, a TransUnion representative will join Omnisient’s board of directors.

“The Omnisient platform allows multiple clients to use built-in advanced analytical tools to simultaneously evaluate the utility of diverse data sets, identifying those that deliver measurable value. Through this collaboration, TransUnion expects to gain access to a broader range of alternative data sources and privacy preservation capabilities. By accelerating the integration of high-impact data into our ecosystem, we intend to enhance existing solutions and develop new, market-relevant products that better meet the evolving needs of our customers,” said Lee Naik, Regional President/ CEO of TransUnion Africa. 

“Traditional data models often fail to reflect the lived realities of African consumers, leaving millions without access to credit and the opportunities it enables,” said Naik. “Financial inclusion is central to unlocking economic growth across the continent. That’s why we’re committed to leading with bold, African-born solutions designed to see the unseen and serve the credit invisible by integrating alternative data sets alongside traditional credit data in ways that reflect uniquely African contexts and realities. By incorporating non-traditional indicators of financial behaviour, this approach broadens access to credit and helps us reach more underserved communities. We believe accelerating the adoption of alternative data is critical to closing the credit gap at scale, enabling faster, fairer and more inclusive access to financial services for millions across the continent.”

“Our privacy-preserving data collaboration platform brings financial services and consumer brands together, allowing them to discover, validate and commercialise new alternative sources of consumer behavioural and transactional data without having to exchange sensitive personal information,” said Jon Jacobson, co-founder and group CEO of Omnisient. “This data allows financial institutions to make better risk decisions with more confidence and security, unlocking the potential to grow financial inclusion for hundreds of millions of people around the world.”

This collaboration marks a natural progression in TransUnion’s strategy to expand financial inclusion across Africa. By leveraging privacy-enabled alternative data sets through Omnisient’s platform, TransUnion intends to strengthen its ability to help address the challenge of bringing an estimated 500 million* financially excluded Africans into the formal financial ecosystem. By responsibly harnessing alternative data at scale, TransUnion sees the opportunity to bring millions of new-to-credit and credit-underserved consumers across Africa into the financial mainstream. This enables individuals to begin building a credit profile, many for the first time, laying the foundation for long-term economic empowerment. It’s a powerful demonstration of TransUnion’s commitment to using Information for Good^® to drive measurable impact at scale: expanding access to credit, unlocking economic potential and reshaping the future of finance across Africa.

Global demand is rising for alternative data solutions that protect privacy, build trust and unlock value. Omnisient’s platform meets this need with technology that enables secure, privacy-preserving data collaboration. Instead of transferring raw data, Omnisient uses tokenised keys to represent personal information in the data set, ensuring privacy is maintained throughout the process. As a leading provider in Africa of secure, many-to-many data connectivity between banks, financial institutions and third-party sources, Omnisient is driving innovation in data collaboration.

^*Source: The Global Findex Database 2021

Read More at the Source