Loan origination is not a part of Credit Karma’s roadmap.

Instead, the free credit score provider and lending lead generator will continue to leverage its consumer data to build relationships.

“We thought about getting into originations, and unequivocally we’re not going to, because our platform is built on trust,” Credit Karma founder and CEO Kenneth Lin, said at the DataDisrupt financial services conference today. “We want to be the trusted advisor for the consumer and that’s hard to do that when we are the company making money from those originations.”

Lin also cited the cons of attempting to compete with Credit Karma’s partners in the lending space; the company, which was founded in 2007 and now has about 60 million users across the United States and Canada, works with credit bureaus and other financial institutions to provide consumers “truly free” access to their financial data.

“From a data perspective, there was always this hole in the underwriting process and if we could fill that hole, we could make a much more effective experience for the consumer,” said Lin about Credit Karma Tax, launched earlier in the year.

“If you take a look at financial services, we know data is really important, but I think the way we [FIs] have used data in this industry is mainly for the benefit of the institution, and not for the benefit of the consumers. No consumer ever says, ‘Wow, I wish that bank had a better underwriting process,’” said Lin.

Leveraging data analytics with “consumer perspective” in mind is a necessary shift in the lending space, but which “hasn’t happened yet,” he added.