Abbey Wemimo

Related Links

• LinkedIn Bridging the racial wealth gap. Leveraging technology to create a permanent bridge to financial access and inclusion.

• Twitter: @Wemimo11 Paving a permanent bridge to financial access and inclusion for everyone!

• Company: Esusu Esusu was built to create equitable financial access for everyone. Today, the barrier to financial stability for many in the United States is their credit score or lack thereof. More than 45 million Americans are deemed “credit invisible”, meaning one in every ten adults has no credit history with one of the three credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, or Transunion). Esusu was created on the premise that where you come from, the color of your skin, and your financial identity should never determine where you end up in life.

• Article: 45 Million Americans Lack Credit Scores. This Founder Has a Solution Abbey Wemimo, an immigrant from Nigeria, co-founded Esusu after feeling marginalized by the financial system. But raising money for the startup came with its own challenges.

• Article: How a Fintech Exec Who Focuses on Poverty Relief Spends Sundays Wemimo Abbey, a financial technology entrepreneur, knows firsthand how hard it is for immigrants to start new lives in new countries with no resources. When his family moved to Minneapolis from Nigeria in 2009, his mother had no choice but to accept a loan with a 400-percent-plus interest rate so she could get the family settled and pay for Mr. Abbey’s college education. Without credit histories, immigrants are usually denied loans from traditional financial institutions, Mr. Abbey said. “You have to go into debt to get some sort of credit history going, which makes no sense to me.”