>> welcome to an axios virtual event. i am mike allen coming to you from axios hq. welcome to our audiences on facebook, youtube, twitter and axios.com. i will be joined by my colleague , axios executive editor, whitaker moore. our first guess is senator tim scott. you are on the finance and small business and entrepreneurship committees. senator scott, welcome to axios. sen. scott: thank you for having me. good to see you again. mike: working on the idea of financial literacy, pulling it out, promoting it. mike: -- sen. scott: as a kid raised in poverty, the issue of financial literacy is something i wish i would have understood earlier in life. it was my 20's before i started understanding and appreciating that what you look like on paper might be more important than what you look like in person, so financial literacy has so much to do with your future success and present opportunities, and having not learned those lessons early in life, i wanted to make sure that part of my focus is on making sure americans today, no matter their income, have access to financial literacy and, frankly, the more you find yourself in a marginalized community, the more important financial literacy is. mike: there's a lot of conversation about financial inclusion. what can the u.s. government do or should do to promote financial inclusion? sen. scott: the opportunity to focus on financial inclusion is something we have done legislatively. i think there are remedies that level the playing field without reversing discrimination in any way, shape or form. we focus on financial inclusion. veterans often find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to loans and access to credit. we think about those who today are creditworthy but credit invisible. we want to make sure that more of your information finds itself into the credit scoring agencies hands so that you have access, if you are creditworthy, to more products, because you have earned it. we want to help those who are credit where they have more access to opportunity. financial inclusion is about those who should have access to lower interest rates and better terms get that opportunity without any question. sen. scott: you have -- mike: you have lived this as someone who grew up with a single parent and also started your own business. sen. scott: there's no doubt. had it not been for financial literacy in my early 30's, i would not have been able to start that business. i remember walking into a bank and asking for the manager to believe in my dream, my vision, look at my work that i have done in the insurance business, give me a chance to own my own agency. one of his first questions was what is your credit score? i started talking about a lot of things because -- he said, what are your assets? i said, a nine-year-old car with 253,000 miles on it. he was, like, seriously, dude? that's not an asset. he did not say those words because -- words but i think that is what he meant. he walked me through the importance of being creditworthy. my credit score was decent. didn't have the assets, but he helped me understand the importance, and i also had a couple people who also injected into that situation hope and investment in my business. the bank came back to the table then. it is important to have healthy relationships and a healthy relationship with the financial institution so your dreams have a better chance of becoming true. mike: you recently did something that's rarely done in washington. you got 50 members of your own party to sign a bill, something rarely seen. sen. scott: yes. working on behalf of everyday people, you think about the three letters you never went to senior mailbox, it is the irs, and having more letters delivered to our mailboxes because of the new reporting requirements from the irs to your financial institutions. i wanted to preemptively make that an impossibility, getting 60 republicans on in about 24 hours and talking to a few colleagues on the others who were able to get part of this taxing and spending bill out of it. it also sends a negative message to 7 million on banked -- million unbanked americans that being involved with financial institutions in this country makes you more likely to be audited, a scary proposition that would reduce reliance on our banking system, so opposing that with all my republican colleagues and a couple colleagues on the others. -- on the others. -- on the other side. mike: you mentioned unbanked people. when you go home, that is a big issue in south carolina. sen. scott: the percentage of south carolinians who are un banked is about 17%. one out of every five south carolinians have no good relationship or no relationship with financial institutions. they could be dangerous and it also means they are not able to avail themselves to the entire portfolio that might be available at their financial institution so we want to encourage the credit invisible or those who are unbanked to become a part of the system so their kids get to benefit from the opportunities afforded to people who have that relationship. during the pandemic, we saw that having a relationship with your financial institution, especially as a small business, was important to getting your ppp loan approved and forgiven in record time. mike: and, senator, i think there's a lot of people, including maybe some of our guests today, who don't realize that there are americans who are basically excluded from the global financial system, but that is something you are very familiar with. sen. scott: i am. i have lived that reality of being outside financial systems for probably half my life almost. the older you get, the harder it is to say that, of course, but for the millions of americans around our country who need more help, need more resources, need more access to loans and opportunities, it is imperative upon us in the positions that we hold to make it easier for those who are creditworthy to get the credit they need. you think about homeownership and the disparities between the races. one of the ways we bridge that gap is not by extending loans to people who cannot afford it, but helping those who can be part of the system and those who have been paying their rent on time, electric bill on time, their cell phone bill in time, that information should be scored by the credit scoring agencies. and when that happens, you have more people who have the beauty of experiencing the american dream, building equity in their largest asset, their home, and closing the wealth gap. that erases a lot of the ills of society in and of itself, so we will continue to work hard on the topic. mike: senator, i have to ask on behalf of our audience, a very practical question. if i want to improve my credit standing, if i am a young person wanting to enter the workforce or a young entrepreneur, what is one of the biggest, clearest, simplest things that i can do to make myself more credit visible? sen. scott: one thing you can do to make yourself more credit visible is get a copy of your credit report. one of the things i started with when i was a youngster is i got a copy of my fica score so i would understand what is being reported, is it accurate and how can i change it? an important step is knowing where you are. the second step is then evaluating your need for credit. if you have high credit limits, $500 or $50,000, the closer you are to your credit limit, the worse your score will be. the more open accounts you have with lots of credit access, it can also have a negative impact on your credit score, and of course, pay your bills on time, including your student loans, because sometimes you think your loans are grants and they are not, so they need to be paid, so just making sure you are disciplined, on that 30 day cycle, as much as humanly possible. sometimes you have the end of the month and not enough money and that can make it hard. mike: that is good, senator. and you have a little expression i think that would be encouraging to people watching the sand learning from this -- people watching this and learning from this. as we were micing up, i said it is a great time to be a republican. you said -- sen. scott:sen. scott: it is a better time -- sen. scott: it is a better time to be an american. i am more interested in being a happy warrior and they get things done, so that is my goal. i care more about the american people than partisan politics. mike: and, senator, i liked when you said it is always a good time to be yourself. sen. scott: yeah. i said happy warrior, but yeah. that is important. as we end, it is always a good time to be yourself. it is always a good time to just be comfortable in your skin. doing so gets -- so allows you to sincerely and authentically fight for the things you believe in, and frankly, the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the more likely you are to lift up others who are not like you, because if you are comfortable, you know you are flawed as well, so having the chance to have honest conversations in public for them will make our democracy stronger in my perspective. mike: thank you for sharing your thoughts with axios. sen. scott: thank you, mike. mike: we will head to my colleague, the axios vice president. >> thanks, mike. now joining us from chicago, illinois is chris cartwright, president and ceo of a union -- of a corporation that is the sponsor of this event. hi, chris. >> hi. nice to be here. >> there are 60 million americans with thin or nonexistent credit files. why is that and how can we all of in the -- and how can we elevate them to full participants in the economic system? >> good question and we should start with the basics. first in the u.s., we have one of the most sophisticated credit reporting systems in the world, and the bureaus are able to score over 200 million u.s. adults reliably, and we do it based on the data that we receive on a monthly basis from lending institutions across the country of all different types. this could be a full-service bank, a mortgage lender, auto lender, an online consumer lender of various stripes. over 90,000 vendors in the u.s. regularly report to the credit agencies and we take all that data about the loans that exist, the consumers who have those loans, the terms of the loans, and the payment behaviors, and we can create reports from that and credit scores, which is a type of an analytic that expresses a consumer's ability to service debt, typically the next available loan. now, that said, there's still upwards of 60 million adults who, for a variety of reasons, have never had alone -- had a loan, or maybe not had one recently, so there's not enough data archived for those individuals to qualify for a loan. that does not mean they are not responsible adults capable of borrowing money and repaying in accordance to terms. in fact, many of those americans are regularly paying rent bills or utilities or a telecommunications bill, etc., and all of that bill-payment behavior is indicative of good personal financial management and the ability to take loans and to repay debt. in fact, somebody who is renting their home or apartment, they might actually save money if they could purchase it, right? but we need to have information like rent and utilities and others in order to include more americans in this modern financial system. >> all of that data that is being collected actually does benefit the consumer. >> it certainly could if we could get contributions of what we call alternative data, which would include the rent, utilities, certain types of payday loans, etc., and add it to the mainstream credit archive. that would help us score those 60 million americans who currently do not have a score and will thus have more difficulty accessing loans that help them get the need -- the things they are looking for to improve the quality of their lives. >> we are here to talk about expanding financial inclusion. what role does transunion play in determining credit worthiness? chris: it is a great question and we believe we are at the center of this -- you know, the traditional role of the credit bureau to accrue information from all the banks about the loans in existence to various consumers, the terms of those loans, and the payment histories, of course. and from that, we can produce, you know, reports of linda repayment experience and also analyze the information to produce a score, and the score is really used to assess a consumer's financial performance and ability to take on more credit. it is an incredibly, you know, powerful repository of credit information, and it is the foundation for so much commerce in our economy. that said, there are other forms of information that are really important indicators of a consumer's financial management practices, if you will, that currently are not on the bureaus and are not taken into account. i think rent is one of the best examples of this. a rent bill is one of the largest bills a renter pays each month, and i think that they should get credit on their credit reports for consistent repayment. in fact, that can position them to get a mortgage, which ultimately could save them money over their rent payment but also help them start building value in an asset over time, you know, a huge source of wealth creation over time for americans. but utility payments are also extremely important and to looking indications payments -- and telecommunications payments, so there are all kinds of non-loan financial activity that we believe should be included in the modern credit reporting system in order to expand access to the system for the tens of thousands -- tens of millions of americans who currently don't have it. abby: absolutely. and what is next for the credit reporting industry? what trends and innovations are you following and how do you see this space working and growing to expand financial inclusion in the future? chris: yeah, there's been a lot of growth in recent years across the credit reporting industry, and it is really being driven by the appetite for data from businesses and government to understand who they are dealing with and to have an accurate picture of those individuals, but there's an important flipside as well. consumers, as they engage in the modern economy, which, as we all know, is increasingly digitally driven, they want to bring the full complement of data about their behavior, their individual characteristics if you will, so they are completely and fairly represented. this is true for all consumers but particularly important for underrepresented populations that have not had the same access historically to lending as others. abby: well, i hope we get to a place where there is more inclusion in our financial institutions and it seems like transunion is working for that. so thank you, chris, for joining us and axios in this discussion today. chris: yeah, thank you, abby. and, look, i am an optimist. we are on an encouraging trend of increasing access to information and helping more consumers participate in the economy and i am confident with the partnership we have in government to achieve that. abby: that's great. we want to thank transunion for making this broader conversation possible. now to my colleague, azia whitaker moore. >> our final guest is the president and ceo of women's world banking, joined me from boston, massachusetts. hi, mary. >> great to see you again. >> thank you for joining us. i think we should talk about why we are here. after more than a year of more -- of unprecedented global challenges from the pandemic, we are rethinking economic growth and facing a rising divide in economic opportunity access. maybe we can start by talking about who is this impacting? who is this excluding the most and doesn't make sense to target those people outside the tent or those the easiest to reach? -- people furthest outside the tent or those that are easiest to reach? >> i think one of the really seminole, important -- seminal, important takeaways from 2020 and this year is how women of every age, every economic station, from every geography, have been disproportionately affected, both in the health aspect of the pandemic, but also in the economic part of the pandemic. we saw unemployment rates across the globe two percentage points higher everywhere for women than for men. aja: maybe we can talk about one of the bright spots. there has been a lot of female entrepreneurship, small businesses starting up in the pandemic and even prior to that, but struggling to gain equal access to the same kind of financial resources, investments, opportunities, so how do you think about reaching women specifically and overcoming some of the challenges they have there? mary: i think, for us, our engagement is really around getting the nearly one billion women who are completely cut out of the formal financial system included, and we see one of the really bright spots, one of the silver linings, perhaps, of the global pandemic has been the fact that so many governments have targeted global relief payments to women, around women, and they have done so digitally, so you have seen this real rush of women who, again, were really sort of denied access to both the technology and this increasing growth in digital financial services. we have seen them finally getting access to technology and financial resources that are delivered that way, and the digital space is really starting to pay off for women. you are seeing many more women take advantage of digital commerce, working through existing digital platforms, work from home, but to reach a much broader audience. we are really seeing digital start to pay off for women, particularly now that they are gaining further access to the technologies. aja: i think that's a really important point. maybe we'll talk a little more about the rush to adoption, how financial and digital literacy plays into people's ability to actually access these technologies and use them to their full capabilities. mary: i love that you put those two together because they really are increasingly the different sides of the same coin, if you will, that so much of financial inclusion, financial outreach to underserved populations today is being done through cell phone technology, but still, we have got a 15% gender gap in the ownership of smartphones in particular, so internet access. that's actually a good number, the first reduction we have seen since we have been collecting the data, but a really will only fulfill its potential, women's access to that technology, if they know how to use it, if they feel confident using it, so it is really no longer enough to say, you know, do you know how to budget? do you understand compound interest? you know, some of the traditional financial literacy topics. you have got to add that digital literacy so women feel confident and feel they have the skills and the knowledge they need to really use that technology that they are now finally getting access to. aja: and when you think about some of the creative solutions you have seen take hold in the private sector over the past year or even beyond that, what are some of the things have -- things that have had the most lasting impact? what is working? mary: i would divide my answer into two groups. first, i think you started to really see, amongst some of the corporate sector, the real recognition that if we do not deal with women's caregiving responsibilities, it is the number one reason cited by both women and men for not going back to the workforce. and some companies have really started to understand how important caregiving is going to be to economic growth and economic recovery, so i would say there is that one really important piece that corporates are being quite responsive to. the other one specifically relates to the idea of technology and finance, i.e. fintech. while i am disappointed that the sector itself still does not have as many women founders as it should. only 14% of those companies have even one woman on their board, they can still address many of the barriers. the data analytics they have at their fingertips allows for alternative credit scoring, so you're starting to see an expansion of credit to women entrepreneurs that may not have had it. you are starting to see easier processes, more fun processes, lots of games that have come up both in the financial literacy space and in access to finance, reaching down to youth, both boys and girls as well as adults, enjoying learning more about the financial system through technology. a lot of these companies are not regulated yet so they can get things done faster and more nimbly and make some really exciting shifts to reach these populations that have just been left out of the formal financial system until now. aja: it is interesting. you mentioned what companies are thinking and the importance of the care economy. there is some intersection therebetween, you know -- intersection there, you know, between the public and private economy. anything about the biden administration, any partnerships you see moving forward related to financial inclusion or the care economy that you think are worth noting? mary: well, i think it was really important. we probably saw the -- you probably saw the administration release a first gender plan and we were heartened to see a clear understanding of the linkage between women's participation in the economy and the workforce as being vital to economic recovery and economic growth, but that being so linked to caregiving. and then the issue that we are so deeply engaged in, recognizing the further range of financial services and that not all women are entrepreneurs and that every woman needs a safe place to save, insurance to mitigate risks, the ability to have a safety net underneath her so that she can take the risks, she could borrow to take advantage of an opportunity. she needs long-term pension savings and retirement savings, so there's a recognition, i thought, by the administration, of the interlinked nation of women's participation in the economy and economic growth and what are the financial services needed to help get them there. aja: we focus on digital technologies and acknowledge that there is a large segment of people who are still not active in the digital world and how do we reach those people, what are the strategies there that you think are still viable in the best way to meet people where they are. >> i think that is still closely linked to the financial literacy. when women in particular talk about what they want from a financial service provider, it's always about i want to be safe, i want my money to be safe, i wanted to be confidential and i don't want everybody to know what i am saving. once they express those desires that what they are looking for in i financial service and you asked wayne that all of that is so much more readily available

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