How Block built a $200 billion credit operation by seeing customers traditional lenders can't

Podcast: Tearsheet Podcast: Exploring Financial Services Together · Tearsheet Studios

Opublikowano: 2026-04-22

The credit system in the US was built on a fundamental assumption: that past borrowing behavior predicts future risk. That assumption has left roughly 100 million Americans essentially invisible to lenders — no score, thin file, or a history that doesn't reflect who they actually are financially today. The result is a system that compounds exclusion, requiring debt to unlock debt, and pricing risk so conservatively for anyone outside the norm that the cost of capital itself becomes a barrier. Juan Hernandez has spent the last decade at Block building lending products for exactly those customers. As head of credit and underwriting, he...