Michele Tucci, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Credolab

Today we're meeting Michele Tucci, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Credolab. They specialise in turning device and behavioural metadata analytics into predictive insights, redefining informed decision-making in the financial services sector.

Over to you Michele - my questions are in bold:

Who are you and what's your background?

I'm Michele Tucci, Chief Strategy Officer and Managing Director for the Americas at Credolab, where we turn smartphone and behavioral metadata into predictive insights for credit, fraud, and marketing decisions.

I studied economics in Bari, earned my master's in marketing in Rome, and later completed my MBA at Hult in Boston and Shanghai. Each step added a layer: economics gave me the discipline of numbers, marketing taught me to understand human behavior, and my MBA forced me to think globally, moving between two continents in a single program.

My "fintech" career started at Capital One, where I was part of the team that launched its Italian business. From a U.S. headquarters perspective, Italy was considered an "emerging market." Imagine that. It was a crash course in building a business from scratch inside a highly regulated environment with low credit card penetration, and it taught me lessons I still use today. I then went on to senior roles at Mastercard and Intesa Sanpaolo where I deepened my understanding of payments, risk, and digital transformation from very different vantage points: a global network and a European bank.

Over the past 25 years I've worked in more than 45 countries, from mature U.S. and European markets to high-growth regions like Southeast Asia and Latin America. That global exposure convinced me that financial inclusion is ultimately a data problem, and that discovery eventually led me to help build Credolab.

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

I'm the Chief Strategy Officer and Managing Director for the Americas at Credolab. In practice, that means I wear a few different hats every day. On the strategy side, I guide where the company is heading next: which markets to enter, which partnerships to prioritize, and which product bets are worth doubling down on. On the execution side, I work closely with key clients across North and Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa to make sure our technology is not just "deployed" but actually embedded into their decisioning workflows to solve real problems in risk, fraud, and inclusion.

A typical day can swing from reviewing data science results of a new scorecard, to negotiating a partnership with a global ID verification player, to helping a neobank's leadership team rethink why their portfolio is showing 60% defaults. Often the issue is not that the models are wrong, but that the product itself is misaligned with the customer segment. I also spend a fair amount of time with our marketing team translating what our 11 million plus engineered features mean in plain language: that we can score every single app or website user, consistently, fairly, and with less than 5 percent overlap with traditional data sources.

Because we are a lean team, I stay very close to the ground. I am in constant dialogue with our commercial teams across Latam, Asia, and EMEA. I review the messaging that goes out in our PR and sales channels. And I join client meetings personally, not only to strengthen relationships but also to listen first-hand to what lenders and fintechs are struggling with. At its core, my role is to ensure Credolab stays relevant and differentiated, while never losing sight of our mission: improving people's lives by powering every credit decision and unlocking access to fair credit for all.

Can you give us an overview of your business?

Credolab is a behavioral data and analytics platform designed to help banks and fintechs make smarter decisions about credit risk, fraud prevention, and marketing. Instead of relying only on credit bureau files or self-declared data, we analyze privacy-consented smartphone and device metadata - things like app usage patterns, device settings, or keystroke dynamics - to build predictive and explainable scores.

Our unique selling point is twofold:

• Depth of data: We engineer tens of thousands of behavioral features per user, uncovering signals that traditional models miss.
• Explainable AI: Credolab isn't built as a black box model. Our scores are fully interpretable by risk teams and regulator-friendly.

The product is delivered as a lightweight SDK for mobile apps or a web-based integration, so clients can embed us directly into their onboarding and decisioning flows. From there, our intelligence layer works across the customer journey. It flags high-risk applicants at signup, improves approval rates during underwriting, and even guides cross-sell and retention campaigns.

Our business model is subscription-based. We align our pricing to client usage and portfolio size. It's resilient because once our SDK is embedded, it becomes a core part of the client's scoring stack.

The market response has been excellent. We now work with nearly 200 financial institutions in 30+ countries. Of that list, Latin America is now our fastest-growing region that accounts for almost half our revenue. We are starting to see some traction from the US as well and the early results of our tailor-made models look really promising. Clients report up to a 20% uplift in approvals for new-to-credit customers and a 15% reduction in defaults. That's proof that better data is good for both sides, driving both inclusion and profitability.

Tell us how you are funded?

Credolab has taken a different path from many fintechs. We raised a modest $7 million Series A in 2020, led by GBG, a global identity verification provider. When the funding market tightened in 2023, we deliberately stopped chasing VC money, we cut burn, and we rebuilt the company for profitability first.

This pivot ended up being a risk that paid off. By the end of 2024, we were posting healthy double-digit margins, thanks in large part to Latin American growth producing nearly half of our revenue. Today, Credolab is effectively self-sustaining and profitable, which gives us freedom to expand on our own terms without being tied to the VC-led, "growth at all costs" model.

All told, this wasn't the easiest route, but it made us sharper, more disciplined, and more aligned with our clients.

What's the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?

Credolab was born out of a simple but frustrating problem: too many good people were being turned down for credit, not because they weren't creditworthy, but because traditional credit data models had nothing to go on. If you didn't have a thick credit file or a long banking history, you were invisible to lenders.

Peter Barcak and I had both spent years in banking and risk management. We saw firsthand how legacy scorecards, built on a handful of data fields, missed large swathes of the population, from gig workers and young adults to new migrants and small business owners. The irony was that most of these people had smartphones, generating rich behavioral signals every day that could tell a much more accurate story about reliability and intent.

So we started Credolab in 2016 to turn that untapped smartphone and device metadata into predictive, explainable insights for lenders. Instead of relying on self-declared or transactional data, we use privacy-consented behavioral signals to build models that are both more inclusive and more accurate.

For our clients, that translates into higher approval rates without higher risk. For consumers, it means fairer access to financial products. And for the industry, it proves that explainable AI and alternative data can be practical tools for making smarter decisions today.

Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?

Our customers are primarily banks, neobanks, digital lenders, credit bureaus, BNPL providers, and identity verification companies. In short, anyone making decisions around onboarding, underwriting, or fraud prevention benefits from our insights.

Latin America has become our fastest-growing region. For example, Cashea, Agibank, and Circulo de Credito are among the local innovators using Credolab to strengthen underwriting and reduce fraud exposure. We've also got a notable presence in Africa, with Fairmoney in Nigeria using our products. Southeast Asia is a 'home territory' for us as well, with Tonik Bank using Credolab to improve their underwriting.

Our revenue model is subscription-based, aligned to client usage and portfolio size.

The impact is tangible. In the Philippines, one digital bank improved its scorecard predictive power by 40%. Across clients in Africa and Latin America, we've seen approval rates for thin-file applicants increase by up to 20% while non-performing loans dropped by 15%.

One client described it best: "With Credolab, we can finally say yes to customers we used to reject - without taking on more risk."

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?

If I had a magic wand, I would remove the bias that people still carry towards alternative data. Right now in the US, open finance and cash flow underwriting are treated as if they were the best innovations ever invented by risk solution providers. The narrative is that this will solve financial inclusion, yet the reality is far more complicated.

Open finance only works if the user opts in, if the user is already banked, if there is a reliable infrastructure, and if banks are genuinely collaborating to make open banking open. That is not what we see today. Take the case of JP Morgan Chase charging Plaid to access data that is not even Plaid's but the customer's. It shows how far the industry still is from creating a truly open ecosystem.

And even if all of these "ifs" were solved, lenders are still left with the hardest part: they need to interpret the data, analyze its validity, assess predictive power, and decide what information is truly valuable. The ultimate limitation is that open banking data reflects the past, not the future. If a customer loses a job tomorrow, all of the open banking data becomes irrelevant. Full stop.

That is why I believe the industry needs to look beyond what is already inside the banking system and embrace alternative signals like devices and behavioral intelligence. These sources capture how people actually live, work, and manage their routines. They remain predictive even when someone changes jobs, relocates, or faces a financial setback. If I could change one thing, it would be to finally break the habit of dismissing these signals as "alternative" and instead recognize them as the new foundation of fair and forward-looking credit decisions.

What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?

My message to the largest banks, fintechs, and payment companies is very simple: test alternative data. Even a 1 percent increase in predictive power translates into a 1 percent reduction in the cost of risk. That is not my opinion - it is McKinsey's. Invite your teams to challenge the way you have always done business and measure it against more modern approaches. Let the data speak and let the best ideas win.

The other message is to rethink what truly needs to be built in-house and what can be sourced from specialists. Risk management is a core function for any bank or neobank that wants to stay profitable through lending. But risk management is not just about the data you already have. It is about continuously finding new signals that allow you to lend smarter, prevent fraud, and include more customers. Your teams should be focused on the core problems that differentiate you in the market, while outsourcing layers of intelligence to providers who have spent years building and refining them.

Take Credolab as an example. In January 2026 we will celebrate our 10-year anniversary. We have spent a decade perfecting our ability to extract intelligence from device fingerprints and digital behaviors, and turning that into actionable risk, fraud, and marketing insights. Why would a bank or neobank invest precious time and resources to recreate a capability that is not core to its operations when it is already available in a plug-and-play system?

Be bold, be data-driven, and be willing to let specialists help you win faster.

The financial services industry has never lacked ambition, but too often it defaults to old habits. My invitation to every CEO and CIO reading this is: be bold, be data-driven, and be willing to let specialists help you win faster.

Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?

I like to balance global perspective with regional depth. For global news, I start with Finextra. It is one of the few publications that consistently covers the full spectrum of financial services, from the biggest banks to the newest payment fintechs. It helps me stay plugged into the themes shaping the industry worldwide, whether that is regulation, new partnerships, or the next wave of digital innovation.

For North America, I turn to Future Nexus. It gives me a sharper view of what is happening across the US and Canada, especially in areas like open banking, credit innovation, and fraud prevention. These are themes that tend to ripple out globally, so staying on top of them at their point of origin is critical.

For Latin America, my main source is the news and insights shared by my network on LinkedIn. I have the privilege of being connected to founders, bankers, investors, and regulators who are deeply embedded in the region's fintech ecosystem. Their posts often surface the most relevant developments before they reach the mainstream media, and they provide local context that is hard to find elsewhere.

This combination of global coverage, North American trends, and Latin American on-the-ground insights helps me connect the dots between established and emerging markets, which is essential in my role at Credolab.

Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn, and why?

It is hard to narrow it down, but here are three leaders I follow closely and recommend to anyone serious about fintech and financial services:

• Cristina Junqueira - Co-Founder at Nubank. I admire Cristina because Nubank's journey reminds me of my early days at Capital One. The same scientific rigor, the discipline to scale at home before expanding abroad, and the courage to disrupt an entrenched market. Following her is a masterclass in how to grow responsibly while keeping customers at the center.
• Sopnendu Mohanty - Group CEO, Global Finance & Technology Network (formerly Chief FinTech Officer at MAS). Sopnendu shaped Singapore into one of the world's leading fintech hubs. What I value most in his posts is the balance between innovation and regulation. He has influenced how I think about regulators, not as roadblocks but as partners who can create the right frameworks for inclusion and growth.
• Frank Rotman - Founding Partner & CIO at QED Investors. Frank has built a strong track record in investing in credit-centric, data-intensive fintechs, with a mindset that aligns with thinking ahead, testing rigorously, and scaling responsibly.

What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?

When I first moved to the US, I ran into the same issue every white-collar immigrant faces: I was a thin-file customer. Although I had income, experience, and international credit history, none of that mattered to the American credit system (funny enough, Nova Credit could not import my credit file from Singapore or Italy). I applied for a Capital One credit card, and not even they could approve me. To start building credit, I turned to Affirm, although in reality I continued to use my debit card or my foreign-issued credit cards for most purchases. Along the way, I also tried solutions like Sunbit, Synchrony, and LendingClub.

For readers outside the US, this might sound strange. The idea that you have to "build" your credit before you can access meaningful financial products is a uniquely American challenge. It reflects the way the credit scoring system works here, and it is a real barrier to inclusion. After about 12 months, I was finally able to apply for a Chase Amazon card to help with all the purchases needed for a new house, and an American Airlines card from Citibank because I travel so much. And of course, I had to remember the golden rule of staying below 30 percent utilization on each card so that my credit score would not drop for "risky consumption," despite having a steady salary and a very low debt-to-income ratio. The irony is hard to miss.

This personal journey is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in alternative data. If traditional scoring systems can fail someone like me, imagine how often they fail people in emerging markets who have no formal file at all. Which brings me full circle to Mercury Bank. When we set up Credolab Inc, our US subsidiary, it was the only bank willing to open an account for a foreign fintech. Not even our main bank in Singapore was willing to take the risk. That early support from Mercury made a real difference, and I still value them for being a truly fintech-friendly institution.

What's the best new FinTech product or service you've seen recently?

I love what Nubank is doing across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. It reminds me of my days at Capital One, with the same scientific rigor of scaling first at home before expanding abroad. They started with lending, then launched new products to deepen customer relationships and increase revenue per user.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Revolut took a very different path in Europe. They began laser-focused on a single use case, remittances, and then built outward from there. The strategies are different, but the outcome is similar: both are now massive players reshaping consumer finance.

Closer to home in Latin America, I admire Rappi for what it represents to Colombians and Mexicans. It is not just about the convenience for users, but also about the income opportunities it generates for drivers and delivery partners. In Peru, Yape has become a staple for payments and bill splitting, making digital finance easy and ubiquitous. And in Venezuela, Cashea stands out. At a time when no bank was willing to extend credit, they stepped in with BNPL and today process transactions equivalent to about 5 percent of the national GDP. That level of impact is remarkable.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?

Although everyone is talking about AI, and every board member has a mandate to deploy some form of it in their banks, there is still a lot of confusion. In times like this, I prefer to go back to basics and focus on what delivers concrete value. The idea of agentic or autonomous payments is particularly concerning to me. The fact that some agents may decide to make a transaction without me knowing takes me back to my early days at Mastercard. In 2008, when I started, debit cards were still the main payment method outside Anglo-Saxon markets. One of the primary reasons consumers in developed markets such as Italy, France, and Germany avoided credit cards was fear of overspending and loss of control because of how easy it was to pay. Today, the form factor is gone and payments are embedded into the services we use. Think about leaving an InDrive ride and realizing the payment was already handshaken by the system. That's convenient. But if you add autonomous payments on top of that, you risk eroding one of the most important consumer instincts: the need to feel in control of one's own money.

Beyond AI hype and agentic payments, I see three other trends shaping the future of fintech.

1. The rise of behavioral data and device intelligence. Traditional credit bureaus and open banking data are still important, but they only tell part of the story. The next few years will be defined by data that captures how people actually behave in the digital world. Device fingerprints, app usage, and behavioral biometrics will be recognized not as "alternative" but as essential to risk, fraud, and marketing decisions.
2. Regional fintech champions going global. What started with Nubank in LATAM or Revolut in Europe will accelerate. Regional leaders that solve local problems better than anyone else will begin expanding internationally. Their playbooks will differ, some start with lending, others with payments or remittances, but the common thread is scale, scientific rigor, and relentless focus on customer needs.
3. Inclusion as a growth strategy, not CSR. The unbanked and underserved populations represent the next billion customers. Financial inclusion will no longer be treated as a "good to have" corporate social responsibility initiative. It will be the growth engine for banks and fintechs alike. The winners will be those who can responsibly underwrite thin-file customers, prevent fraud without excluding them, and embed financial services into everyday digital experiences.

So while AI will certainly make headlines, the real story will be about trust, control, and inclusion. Technology is only valuable if it improves people's lives and creates systems that are both safer and more accessible. That is where the next wave of fintech innovation will be defined.

Thank you very much, Michele!

Read more about Michele Tucci on LinkedIn and find out more about Credolab at credolab.com.