Sep 21, 2023

Challenger credit bureau Credit Kudos has raised £2.2m in its latest funding round, led by Ascension Ventures. The injection of funds will be used to support growth in the UK and accelerate expansion plans into Europe. Funds will also be directed to the development of Credit Kudos’ Open Banking app. Recommended Reports The platform offers lenders, brokers and financial institutions access to a scoring system based on consumer consented data. The aim is to enable lenders to make better credit decisions, while helping more individuals to access credit. Existing investors NFT Ventures and Entrepreneur First’s Next Stage Fund also joined the funding round, while new backers included Sarah Willingham, Charlie Songhurst, John McAndrew and Graham Lund. Freddy Kelly, chief executive of Credit Kudos, said: “This investment allows us to scale up our business to meet the demands of a post-Open Banking and PSD2 world. This funding will be used to expand our engineering and development team to continue to deliver first to market technology across our platform, as well as supporting expansion into wider Europe.” “Credit Kudos is a core solution to tackle the lack of fair and affordable access to credit for customers, with thin files or no credit history,” added Emma Steele, investment manager for Ascension Ventures. “We back Freddy’s ambition to change the way the risk profile of a potential borrower is assessed. “By doing that, Credit Kudos has the potential to 1) advance financial inclusion by improving approval rates for people previously excluded by the system 2) help prevent borrowers from being forced into higher priced products and 3) make it easy for lenders to check affordability. We are excited to back the team on this journey.” Last year, Credit Kudos partnered with P2P platform Lending Works to help the firm automate its borrowing application process. Credit Kudos is able to pull data from prospective borrowers’ bank accounts, which will then be used to automatically fill the forms and upload documents required Lending Works’ loan application process. Share this article