Over the last decade, the way people earn, spend, and save money has shifted dramatically. Traditional, salaried employment is no longer the only or even the dominant path to financial security. From delivery partners and freelance designers to ride-hailing drivers and digital creators, gig workers now make up a significant share of the global workforce. Alongside them, an equally critical group has emerged: individuals who are new-to-credit, young professionals, recent immigrants, or those entering the financial system for the very first time.
Why do these groups matter so much? Because they represent the future of financial growth. Gig workers often manage volatile incomes across multiple streams, while new-to-credit customers are at the beginning of their financial journeys. Both groups are eager for stability, opportunity, and products that actually understand their realities. Yet, they’re still largely underserved by traditional credit evaluation models that depend heavily on rigid scoring systems and outdated documentation processes.
This is where innovation comes in. By using alternate data such as transaction histories, mobile payments, and even tools like a GST Analyzer that captures real earning potential. This allows financial institutions to build a far more accurate and inclusive view of risk. Instead of excluding millions due to a lack of credit history, lenders can unlock opportunities for sustainable growth while supporting customers who have long been overlooked.
For financial institutions, this is more than just an inclusion challenge. It’s a strategic opportunity. Serving these segments isn’t simply about extending access; it’s about redefining relevance in an economy that rewards agility and innovation. Institutions that act early stand to build trust, loyalty, and long-term relationships with tomorrow’s most valuable customers. Those that hesitate risk being outpaced by fintechs and digital-first players who are already rewriting the rules.
Defining The New Financial Consumer
The face of today’s financial consumer is no longer defined by the stability of a 9-to-5 paycheck or a long-established credit history. Instead, there are two fast-growing groups: gig workers and new-to-credit customers, who are reshaping what it means to participate in the financial system. Understanding who they are, how they earn, and what they need is the first step for financial institutions to design relevant solutions.
Who Are Gig Workers?
Gig workers are individuals who earn income through short-term contracts, freelance projects, or platform-based services rather than traditional full-time employment. They represent a diverse cross-section of the economy:
- Sectors: Ride-hailing, food delivery, logistics, e-commerce, digital freelancing, healthcare, education, and creative industries.
- Demographics: Largely urban, younger in age, and increasingly digital-native. Many are also part of the informal workforce transitioning into more formalized earning channels.
- Income patterns: Unlike salaried employees, gig workers face volatile and irregular incomes. A driver’s earnings may vary based on ride demand, a freelancer’s based on project flow, or a delivery partner’s on seasonal trends.
This volatility creates unique financial needs, where they need:
- Flexible access to credit that adjusts to fluctuating income streams.
- Savings and insurance products designed to smooth out financial shocks.
- Faster, real-time payment options that match their on-demand lifestyle.
Who Are New-To-Credit Customers?
New-to-credit customers are individuals entering the financial system for the first time. This group is as diverse as it is vast:
- Youth: Students and first-job professionals beginning their credit journeys.
- Immigrants: People relocating to new countries who often lack recognized credit histories despite being financially responsible.
- Newly employed: Workers moving from informal jobs or cash economies into formal employment.
Their biggest challenge lies in the absence of traditional credit records. Conventional credit checks rely heavily on long-standing repayment histories, which these individuals simply do not have. As a result, they’re often denied loans, credit cards, or even basic overdraft facilities, not because they are high-risk, but because the system doesn’t have the right data to evaluate them.
But these groups are often underserved. This is because financial products were originally designed for a world of stable incomes and predictable credit histories.
- Rigid credit scoring: Ignores alternate income sources or early signs of creditworthiness.
- Documentation barriers: Many lack formal payslips, lengthy bank statements, or tax filings that lenders require.
- Product mismatch: Standardized credit cards, fixed EMIs, or inflexible loans don’t reflect the financial realities of customers with uneven or emerging cash flows.
This disconnect leaves millions excluded from mainstream financial services, not because they lack the ability to repay, but because the system hasn’t evolved to measure their potential fairly. For financial institutions, recognizing this gap is the first step toward building inclusion and capturing a high-growth customer base that represents the future of financial services.
The Business Case: Why Pursue Gig Workers and New-to-Credit Segments?
For financial institutions, serving gig workers and new-to-credit customers is all about seizing a business opportunity with enormous growth potential. These consumers are young, dynamic, and represent the next generation of financially active individuals. Ignoring them today means losing relevance tomorrow.
1. Market size and projected growth: Gig workers are multiplying globally. Gig and freelance work could make up a third of the global workforce. In countries like India, gig platforms are expected to create millions of new jobs across delivery, logistics, and digital services. And new-to-credit customers are the “first-time borrowers” of the future. With increasing youth employment, migration, and digital penetration, this segment is expanding rapidly. Each new entrant represents a long-term relationship waiting to be nurtured.
2. Lifetime value potential: Customers starting their financial journeys today will be tomorrow’s home loan seekers, investors, and insurance buyers. Capturing them early builds lifetime value. Using alternate data sources, transaction patterns, mobile payments, even GST Analyzer insights from small businesses and freelancers. This allows lenders to see beyond traditional credit reports and identify high-potential customers before competitors do.
3. Loyalty and cross-sell opportunities: Financial trust, once established, is sticky. A gig worker who secures flexible credit lines or income-smoothing products will likely stay loyal to the institution that recognized their worth. From there, cross-sell opportunities open up: micro-savings accounts, insurance, investment products, and larger loans as the customer’s financial profile matures.
4. Risks of inaction: being outpaced by fintechs and neobanks: Fintechs and digital-first lenders have already recognized this gap. They’re moving fast, using AI-driven models, alternative scoring, and embedded finance partnerships to win over these underserved groups. If traditional banks delay, they risk becoming irrelevant to an entire generation of customers who may never see them as the go-to provider. The bigger risk? Losing not just individuals, but whole ecosystems of gig platforms and migrant communities that could otherwise have been brought into their fold.
Redefining Creditworthiness with Alternate Data
Traditional credit evaluation has long been anchored to fixed metrics. While effective for salaried customers, this model fails when applied to gig workers and new-to-credit individuals, whose income streams and financial footprints often fall outside conventional boundaries. To unlock this untapped market, financial institutions need to redefine creditworthiness and adopt more dynamic approaches.
1. Alternative data sources expanding the lens
Beyond traditional credit scores, richer signals can reveal true financial health. Bank transactions highlight savings and repayment discipline, while gig platform earnings provide steady records of income. Mobile payments and digital wallets capture spending patterns and repayment potential, and GST Analyzer insights validate revenue flow for self-employed and small businesses. Together, these alternate data sources build a more accurate, inclusive foundation for credit evaluation.
2. AI-powered risk modeling for volatile incomes
Gig workers often deal with volatile incomes that rise and fall daily or monthly, and traditional credit scoring systems tend to penalize this unpredictability. By contrast, AI and machine learning can smooth out these fluctuations, spotting patterns across platforms, timeframes, and payment channels to predict repayment capacity more accurately. These models also support dynamic credit evaluation, updating risk scores in near real time as new data becomes available. This gives lenders greater agility and confidence in their decisions.
3. Regulatory environments: balancing innovation and compliance
Regulators play a vital role in making the use of alternate data transparent, fair, and privacy-conscious. Issues like data ownership, consent, and ethical AI remain central, and the challenge lies in balancing innovation with consumer protection. While forward-looking regulators are beginning to recognize the value of tools like the GST Analyzer in building fairer systems, clear frameworks are still needed to enable adoption at scale.
Also read: How Alternate Data is Revolutionizing Credit Underwriting
Regulatory and Policy Considerations
As financial institutions explore new ways of credit evaluation through alternate data and AI-driven models, regulation becomes a crucial anchor. Innovation must fit within risk frameworks that protect both lenders and customers, ensuring growth doesn’t come at the cost of stability. For migrant workers and cross-border earners, additional hurdles arise, income verification and compliance often get complicated when financial footprints span multiple countries.
At the same time, issues of privacy, consent, and fair lending practices cannot be overlooked. Customers need to feel confident that their data is being used responsibly and transparently. This is where policy advocacy matters. By working closely with regulators, industry players can help shape enabling environments that balance innovation with consumer protection, making it easier to scale fair, inclusive, and future-ready financial systems.
Enabling Fair Credit Access with Accumn AI
Accumn AI is designed to solve exactly the kind of challenges that traditional credit systems struggle with. By leveraging alternate data, advanced AI-driven credit evaluation, and tools like its GST Analyzer, Accumn AI helps financial institutions build a more accurate picture of borrowers who may not have formal credit histories.
For gig workers with volatile incomes or small business owners just entering the credit system, this means they are evaluated on real earning potential rather than outdated scoring models. For lenders, it translates into sharper risk insights, faster decisions, and the ability to tap into high-growth customer segments with confidence. In short, Accumn AI bridges the gap between financial institutions and the next generation of borrowers, enabling inclusion without compromising on prudence.
Conclusion
The financial world is at a turning point. Gig workers and new-to-credit customers are not just emerging segments but the foundation of tomorrow’s economy. The question for institutions is no longer if they should serve these groups, but how quickly they can adapt to meet their needs. Acting early isn’t simply about securing market share; it’s about building trust and setting new standards for fairness and innovation in finance.
Those who move first will shape customer expectations, influence regulatory thinking, and create models that others will later follow. More importantly, they will unlock the possibility of a financial system that sees people not only for their history, but for their potential. That is the true vision of financial inclusion: a system where opportunity is not limited to those who already have access, but extended to those just beginning their journey.
