A revolutionary piece of software launched by the AI-driven lender, Abound, will allow financial providers, such as high-street banks, and innovative startups, to safely offer people affordable loans with low interest rates – even when customers don’t have a credit score.
The technology - known as ‘Render’ - allows financial institutions to make smarter, quicker assessments of borrowers by looking at their entire financial position, rather than simply reviewing a credit score, using cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
Render works by using open banking to ‘x-ray’ the incomings and outgoings of borrowers. Artificial intelligence combines the open banking data with traditional data sources, including credit data, to make an automated lending decision.
Render enables companies to reach more consumers without taking on more risk. To date, the number of consumers that have missed payments is 75% lower than the industry standard.
From today, Render is available for businesses across Europe to make better lending decisions and power embedded finance within their products. For its launch, five financial businesses, including consumer lenders, mortgage providers and embedded finance providers, have signed up to embed Render into their services.
Gerald Chappell, the CEO and Co-Founder of Abound and Render, said:
“We are very excited to launch Render with our first five clients. This has the potential to give millions more people access to affordable credit, and we’re already in talks with numerous other businesses, including high-street banks, across EMEA.”
“Credit scores were invented more than 50 years ago and while they may be right on average, they are wrong in every individual case. In the modern era where we have cutting-edge artificial intelligence and Open Banking data, we can and should do better. Render is better for lenders as it reduces risk, and better for customers as it enables lower interest rates.”
Michelle He, the COO and Co-Founder of Fintern and Render, added:
“There are millions of ‘credit invisible’ people in the UK, and despite many having strong finances, they are being ignored by banks. With Render lenders can better serve their borrowers and reduce the risk while doing so.”
It is estimated that over 15 million people in the UK currently struggle to borrow for unexpected costs, with many with poor credit scores only being offered unacceptably high interest rates. By using Render, companies can reach more customers and offer better rates.