According to the New York Fed, US total household debt reached $18.2 trillion in the first quarter of this year.
While there were positive signs—credit card balances were lower quarter-over-quarter—the $16 billion uptick in student loan balances, including the number of loans that had moved from “current” to “delinquent,” was a reminder of how dynamic the US household debt landscape can be. The report also noted that, while there were no significant increases in the number of auto loans and credit card balances that had “transitioned into serious delinquency,” there was an increase in aggregate delinquency rates versus the previous quarter.
It is against this backdrop that we learned that debt recovery and credit rebuilding innovator Remynt has secured a strategic investment from One Washington Financial, the wholly-owned holding company of WSECU (Olympia, Washington). As part of the investment, Remynt, which won Best of Show in its Finovate debut at FinovateSpring last year, will also become a Credit Union Service Organization or CUSO.
“Since Remynt’s founding, our goal has been to support credit unions because we align closely in our support for financial wellness,” Remynt Founder and CEO Gwyneth Borden said. “We are thrilled to have the support of One Washington Financial and WSECU. This investment will help us scale our business and serve more credit unions to achieve higher recoveries while supporting member financial health.”
Founded in 2022 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Remynt is a digital-first debt and credit recovery company. Remynt enables creditors to recover revenue from non-performing delinquencies and empowers consumers to resolve debt on their own terms thanks to a customer-centric, resiliency-oriented approach. Users of Remynt resolve their outstanding debts via a credit builder that links debt payments to a positive credit tradeline. The Remynt platform features credit score insights, personal finance management tools, and access to other financial wellness resources.
Thanks to this week’s strategic investment, and Remynt’s new status as a CUSO, the company will be able to quickly scale its solutions to support more credit unions and help them achieve economies of scale and operational efficiencies through shared resources and specialized expertise.
“Our partnership with Remynt aligns with our mission to create meaningful community impact by providing access to equitable and innovative financial solutions,” One Washington Financial Principal Scott Daukas said. “By including Remynt as part of WSECU’s financial wellness strategy, we directly contribute to our members’ financial stability, growth, and development.”
I caught up with Gwyneth Borden late last week to talk about Remynt’s investment news, its goals as a CUSO, and what credit unions want—and need—from their fintech partners. An edited transcript of our conversation is below.
As a small business owner in this space, how did you feel about 2025 as the year began?
Gwyneth Borden: I think there had been this sense of optimism. The stock market was going up. People thought things were going to be moving in a better direction.
And so I think we were optimistic going into 2025, initially thinking that consumer confidence had diminished and that 2025 might be a better year if people felt like things were moving in a different direction in the country and maybe that would be a positive thing.
Obviously what we didn’t anticipate were the tariffs, and the crazy back and forth and fluctuations in prices as a consequence. The uncertainty. People losing their jobs.
What’s interesting now is that this is kind of a wait-and-see economy. A lot of people are holding back. Talking with others—with credit unions or people in the collections world—typically tax season is a huge windfall. Everybody pays their debt off in the tax season and we didn’t really see that this year.
Why become a CUSO—a Credit Union Service Organization—now?
Borden: A big part of it, of course, is that we were fortunate to get an investment from One Washington Financial, which is WSECU. And in order to accept that investment, you have to be a CUSO, a credit union service organization. That was fine with us because it very much was aligned—from the very beginning—with our focus on supporting credit unions. We’re just delighted about the opportunity, to really stake our claim in the credit union space and say, “We are really here to be your partner.”
We are especially interested in serving a lot of smaller credit unions; in fact, part of our goal for our CUSO is at least 20% of the credit unions we serve be smaller than $300 million. A lot of tech companies don’t want to serve those businesses because they find it not to be enough revenue or volume for them. But the way our platform is built, it doesn’t really matter if you have two members on the platform or hundreds of members on the platform. It doesn’t cost us any more.
We’re also excited about bringing on WSECU as a customer, as well. They are a $5 billion-plus credit union, so it’s a really exciting opportunity for us to really scale substantially the number of people that we’re getting to serve.
Based on your conversations, what is it that credit unions want—or need—most from their fintech partners?
Borden: For credit unions in general, most of them are really trying to figure out how they can grow their businesses. Every single financial institution, including credit unions, makes money from lending. And in these precarious times, being able still to lend and provide the products people need for their lives (is important). A lot of them are starting to ask: Do we do small dollar loans? Are there credit voucher products? They are looking to see how they can expand their services to better serve the communities around them.
What can we expect to see and hear from Remynt over the balance of the year and into the next?
Borden: We are going to be expanding exponentially and bringing on more credit unions. We are going to release a white-label version of our platform in the latter part of the year that includes some AI agents. So it’s kind of an exciting development in the digital collections space. You’ll see a number of developments on our platform that we’ll be launching later this year, as well as some exciting partnerships with additional credit unions. We’re really staking our claim in a particular area in the credit union space, which I’m really excited about.
