Credit score Kudos Raises £2.2m in Newest Spherical of Funding – Wealth and Finance Worldwide

Credit score Kudos, challenger credit score bureau and chief in business functions of Open Banking, introduced at present they’ve raised £2.2m of their newest spherical of funding. Funding is led by Ascension Ventures, by its social impression fund Truthful by Design, with further funding from present buyers NFT Ventures and Entrepreneur First’s Subsequent Stage Fund. New backers embrace Dragons’ Den star Sarah Willingham; prolific angel investor Charlie Songhurst (investor in Affirm, ClassPass, and Coindesk); and key figures from the credit score business, together with each the previous CEO and MD of Callcredit, now TransUnion, John McAndrew and Graham Lund. The funding shall be used to drive additional progress throughout the UK and help growth into Europe, alongside additional funding into Credit score Kudos’ platform.

Credit score Kudos, which launched its Open Banking platform in January 2018, was co-founded by software program engineers Freddy Kelly and Matt Schofield. Upon returning to the UK after working in Silicon Valley, Freddy confronted a myriad of challenges accessing credit score as a result of his ‘skinny’ credit score file. With little to no latest monetary exercise within the UK, Freddy was supplied solely restricted credit score product choices, with increased rates of interest and restrictions. This expertise led Freddy to co-found Credit score Kudos to assist all folks entry inexpensive credit score.

Within the UK alone, it’s estimated that 1 in 4 UK households have lower than £100 in financial savings, demonstrating a pervasive want for entry to inexpensive credit score. Nevertheless, as a result of inadequate knowledge, many people with essentially the most want for credit score are prone to being pushed into high-cost credit score choices, and have the toughest time accessing inexpensive loans. It was additionally revealed that financially excluded people pay on common a “poverty premium” of £490 each year.

Credit score Kudos’ mission is to advance monetary inclusion by new functions of expertise. Credit score Kudos offers lenders, brokers and monetary establishments with a extremely correct and clear scoring system primarily based on client consented knowledge, offering a fairer illustration of a person’s creditworthiness. Credit score Kudos’ resolution permits lenders to make higher choices, while concurrently serving to beforehand neglected people entry credit score.

Funding on this spherical by Ascension Ventures’ social impression fund Truthful by Design (FBD), is a testomony to Credit score Kudos’ work in direction of the development of monetary inclusion and lowering the poverty premium, to allow beforehand neglected people entry to mainstream credit score by various measures of creditworthiness. “Credit score Kudos may be very a lot on the centre of the FBD funding thesis,” mentioned Emma Steele, Funding Supervisor for Ascension Ventures “They’re a core resolution to tackling the shortage of truthful and inexpensive entry to credit score for purchasers, with skinny information or no credit score historical past. We very a lot again Freddy’s ambition to alter the best way the chance profile of a possible borrower is assessed. By doing that, Credit score Kudos has the potential to 1) advance monetary inclusion by enhancing approval charges for folks beforehand excluded by the system 2) assist stop debtors from being compelled into increased priced merchandise and three) make it simple for lenders to examine affordability. We’re excited to again the crew on this journey.”

Additionally offering additional funding is the world’s main expertise investor, Entrepreneur First. Entrepreneur First have been part of the Credit score Kudos story since inception. Matt Clifford, Entrepreneur First CEO mentioned, “Credit score Kudos is tackling a extremely advanced and difficult downside, taking a brand new method that leverages machine studying to energy smarter choices. We’re thrilled to be doubling down on our dedication to the crew and their imaginative and prescient.”

This funding spherical has introduced a lot of new backers together with BBC Dragons’ Den star Sarah Willingham, “I’m thrilled to be backing the Credit score Kudos crew and their mission to make credit score scoring fairer and simpler for each companies and shoppers. Sadly the normal strategies are nonetheless opaque and complicated and all too usually shoppers are penalised regardless of being very creditworthy. Making use of new knowledge and expertise to the issue provides Credit score Kudos the power to make smarter choices, empowering shoppers and giving them larger alternative. I stay up for seeing Credit score Kudos make quite a lot of lives simpler.”

Securing additional funding from each authentic buyers and additional business leaders is proof of Credit score Kudos’ success and progress since Open Banking turned a actuality in early 2018. “This funding permits us to scale up our enterprise to fulfill the calls for of a post-Open Banking and PSD2 world,” mentioned Freddy Kelly, Credit score Kudos CEO. “This funding shall be used to increase our engineering and growth crew to proceed to ship first to market expertise throughout our platform, in addition to supporting growth into wider Europe.”