Disrupting the Model

As SOLO’s collaborative customer data network emerges as the leading alternative to legacy credit bureaus and data aggregators who have failed to meet the needs of the open banking era, Mulvaney’s decision to join the leadership team of the rapidly growing startup underscores a broader industry reckoning: the credit bureaus and traditional data intermediaries can no longer meet the demands of a rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.

SOLO’s data sharing network represents the permanent, consumer-first alternative.

“The largest financial intermediaries like Plaid and the largest credit bureaus were built for a different era, and they’re holding us back,” said Mick Mulvaney. “These organizations are profiting off of inefficiency and systemic silos and they fail to represent the full scope of consumers’ financial lives. SOLO’s technology and protocol will enable the future of real open banking, where individual data is comprehensive and portable, and institutions are compensated for validating financial information. SOLO’s network reflects the world we live in now, not the one we are leaving behind.”

“Director Mulvaney’s conviction in SOLO stems from our shared belief that the infrastructure of consumer data is falling apart and that the future depends on collaboration and incentive alignment that puts financial institutions and consumers on the same side,” said Georgina Merhom, founder of SOLO.

“When the largest aggregator in the industry agreed to start paying the largest bank, it marked more than a business deal, it was an admission that the old version of open banking is obsolete. Weeks later, FICO cut the credit bureaus out of its scores, confirming what everyone already knew: ad hoc negotiations on data sharing can’t govern the infrastructure that decides who gets access to a loan, a job, or a place to live. These are not surface-level disputes but rather a structural collapse. The industry has outgrown its patchwork of private arrangements and needs a shared protocol.”