Plend secures micro-finance lending partnership
Plend has secured a lending partnership with micro-finance lender Purple Shoots as it gets closer to sealing regulatory approval.
The peer-to-peer consumer lender is still planning to launch in the coming months once its regulatory application to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has been officially approved.
It has already secured a partnership to provide underwriting tools for Purple Shoots an FCA-registered charity and lender that provides loans and business support to Welsh firms.
Plend has built a new credit underwriting system for Purple Shoots that blends data from open banking and credit files.
Read more: Plend raises £700,000 in equity funding round ahead of P2P launch
Karen Davies, founder of Purple Shoots said this will provide a score for borrowers that is “much more meaningful than standard credit scores.”
She said it would help people who struggle to get affordable credit by analysing them in a much fairer way.
“From our point of view, the system is going to give us much better data about our clients and will hopefully enable us to make better informed loan decisions,” Davies said.
“It could, in the longer term, increase the volume of loans we are able to make without losing the critical personal interaction with our client.”
Plend, which uses an innovative credit checking system through open banking to connect consumer borrowers and lenders, is awaiting final regulatory sign off ahead of a planned launch in the coming months.
The platform has already recruited Crowdcube co-founder Luke Lang as executive chair, hired RateSetter’s former risk officer Kevin Allen and has raised £700,000 in a pre-seed equity funding round from venture capital firms in preparation for its launch.
It has also become the second P2P lender to join trade body Responsible Finance, after Lendwise which joined in 2019.
The organisation aims to increase access to fair and affordable credit for people and businesses.
“The past 12 months saw us grow faster than we could’ve ever imagined,” Plend co-founder Robert Pasco said in the latest company newsletter.
“With new partners, new team members and our product almost ready to go live, we’re incredibly excited for what 2022 holds.”
