Verdata CEO Mike Mondelli on the Beyond Banks Podcast

In this episode of the Cobalt Intelligence Podcast, Verdata CEO Mike Mondelli challenges one of the biggest assumptions in SMB lending: that a business owner’s personal credit score is a useful proxy for business performance. With two decades in alternative data – founding L2C and leading TransUnion’s global data strategy – Mike explains why personal guarantees both underestimate risk and limit upside, missing early signs of distress while capping fast-growing businesses at artificially low limits.

Mike shows how the industry is shifting toward verified alternative data – bank account performance, e-commerce sales, processor volume, accounting platforms, and lender-furnished consortium data – and why identity matching is the hidden technical problem holding most lenders back. Verdata’s eighth-generation matching engine, combined with data on ~20 million businesses, reveals how messy commercial identities actually are and why getting this right is essential for accurate scoring and onboarding.

He also highlights market proof points, including lenders already approving SMB loans without personal guarantees, and explains why consumer-grade data governance is quickly becoming mandatory as regulation tightens. For anyone rethinking how to underwrite thin-file SMBs, this conversation offers a clear look at the infrastructure reshaping the next era of small-business lending.