For Users
Cygnt gives you ownership over your financial reputation
If you’ve been asked to create a Cygnt profile you may want to know more about who we are and what we do. Here are answers to our most common questions:
What is Cygnt?
Cygnt is a platform for proving financial characteristics. Sometimes Cygnt is used to showcase someone’s specific financial attributes, like a flier sharing their annual travel spend with an airline to get special status. Other times Cygnt is used to obtain a general insight on financial character, like an employer comfirming an employee doesn’t have undeclared sources of income. Whether specific datapoints or more general abstractions, Cygnt allows for understanding people based on their personal financial data.
Why does Cygnt exist?
Most people and businesses are trustworthy, but building trust can be difficult without data to back it up. Cygnt fills this gap by allowing trust to be built on top of verified, accurate, and holistic data-driven financial profiles.
Why should I use Cygnt?
Our mission is to build trust, and we can’t do that without first earning the trust of our users. Cygnt users are in full control over how their financial data is represented and shared, and only the minimum data needed for a given purpose is ever passed along. Requests for user data must be in plain language and detail how the information will be used, and for how long. If a user doesn’t feel comfortable sharing specific data, he or she may decline the request.
Cygnt users are empowered over their financial reputation, unlike oftentimes inaccurate credit reports or background checks where assessments are built and sold without profilee consent.
Can you give me an example of how this works?
Imagine a landlord wants to keep tabs on their tenant’s financial health. Using Cygnt the landlord would send a request to their tenant to allow an alert if their monthly income dropped by more than 50%. Next, the tenant would review and approve the request. From that point onwards, Cygnt would monitor the tenant’s monthly income and inform the landlord if the tenant’s income dropped past the preset threshold.
Is my data safe?
Cygnt is built from the ground up to protect your financial data according to the highest industry standards. We regularly conduct security audits and are constantly improving our infrastructure. Internally, we have strong controls which limit unauthorized access to any user’s financial data. Your data is safe with Cygnt.
I’ve been asked to make a Cygnt profile. Now what?
If you’ve been invited to join Cygnt, welcome! Please use the link embedded in your welcome email to create your account. The site will walk you through getting set up and using the platform. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with the dashboard’s on-screen chat feature if you have any questions.
What is a Financial Signet?
We call your fully assembled profile your “Financial Signet”. This is your unique financial identity, representing all your financial behaviors. Using the dashboard, you can review your general financial metrics as well as explore nuances in your financial data by creating custom metrics. Only you have full access to your Signet, and only you can control who your data is shared with.
What are my financial badges? How are they assigned? Can I change these?
Financial badges are assigned to you by the Cygnt platform and reflect certain aspect(s) of your financial behavior. To change a badge rating, change your financial behaviors associated with that badge (a description of how each badge is calculated is shown in an info box displayed next to the badge). Your badge is calculated daily, and will change over time with a sustained shift in behavior (for instance, spending less than you earn).
What’s wrong with existing methods of proving financial character? Why do we need this new way of building financial trust?
Up until Cygnt, there hasn’t been any good way of proving somebody’s financial character. The most common method for understanding someone’s financial reputation are credit scores, which were designed in the 1970’s and are increasingly unfit for purpose. More than a third contain errors. They are also known to perpetuate inequality. Above all, they are built and sold without consent or knowledge of the profilee.
We think its time for an alternative method of proving financial character.
Data on my profile isn’t right / I don’t think my badge is accurate.
We use your raw financial data to build your profile. Unlike credit reports or background checks, this data is provided directly by your financial institutions. If you feel something is in error, we’d like to help fix it. From your dashboard, please use the site’s on-screen chat feature to contact our support team.
How does Cygnt make money?
We earn a fee for proving financial character based on consent driven data-sharing. We do not abuse the data you trust with us.
Who is behind Cygnt?
We are a private, for-profit company built on the principle that everyone should control their own financial reputation. Learn more on our ‘About’ page.
Where does the name ‘Cygnt’ come from?
A Signet Ring is a ring bearing a engraving which allows its wearer to create a design when it is pressed onto melted wax. Since ancient times signet rings have been used to validate identity and protect private messages. Meanwhile, a Cygnet is a young swan.
Thus our name Cygnt, and our logo of a wax seal depicting swan feathers.