As banks and financial institutions seek more granular insights from data with hopes of expanding access to credit, some are leaning on the Innovation Lab at TransUnion to bring them closer to that goal.

Established about five years ago, the innovation unit at the consumer credit reporting agency deploys the services of data scientists at the firm to ensure that participants are able to improve existing consumer decision points.

“The Innovation Lab allows our customers to accomplish in days what used to take months, and in the process expand access to credit for millions of American consumers,” Jason Laky, executive vice president of financial services at TransUnion, told Bank Automation News.

The lab also assists financial institutions with launching newer products with which they have limited experience. For instance, a fintech may have significant data around its personal loan offering, but might lack similar insight into auto lending; TransUnion would pitch in by constructing proxy data sets to help the fintech better understand the contours of that business, Michael Umlauf, senior vice president of data science and analytics at TransUnion, told BAN.

Umlauf said the lab works with about two dozen financial institutions per year, most of which are mid- to large-sized lenders. “Some smaller ones are starting to get interested as well,” he said, but declined to identify specific FIs.

TransUnion this week announced a definitive agreement to acquire identity security company Sontiq for $638 million. And although the Innovation Lab’s work is largely concentrated around credit risk, Umlauf said that it has also worked in the identity space and “there’s an opportunity to collaborate” there. However, as the Sontiq transaction hasn’t closed yet, a link-up with the Innovation Lab is premature at this stage.

“Augmenting our consumer interactive business with Sontiq’s identity and cyber-protection services will advance our work to enable consumers and businesses to transact with greater certainty,” Chris Cartwright, chief executive at TransUnion, said in a statement announcing the acquisition.

TransUnion’s Innovation Lab is also focused on building credit risk models that deploy alternative data, such as transaction histories from a consumer’s checking accounts, Umlauf said. Such data can supplement a consumer’s credit profile and provide a more granular picture to the lender, he noted. The lab, which recently started working with insurance companies, has expanded beyond its work with U.S. financial institutions to those in Brazil, Canada and India.

“What we really did is create Innovation Lab as a wrapper around services that we were already doing, that met the market need more precisely,” Umlauf said.