Fintech Lenders’ Responses to Senate Probe Heighten Fears of Educational Redlining

The SBPC found that companies' use of information on credit applicants' education history resulted in ‘educational redlining,’ penalizing borrowers who attended minority-serving institutions. In response to our findings, five United States Senators wrote to a range of companies involved in the collection and use of educational data to demand detailed explanations of this data’s utilization in credit underwriting. These companies' responses only heightened concerns raised in our initial research and revealed additional gaps in fair lending oversight.