Plend raises GBP 40 million

The seed round includes existing pre-seed investors: Ascension, Tomahawk VC, DD Venture Capital, and Haatch who have doubled down on their original commitments in the wake of post-launch growth and our above expected loan performance. Other investors include the founders from Monzo, Starling Bank, and Oodle Car Finance.

This round will be used to rebuild the outdated and backward credit system, which discriminates against applicants based on historic and limited data rather than what someone can truly afford.

The investment will be used to help scale the business into 2023, focusing on acquisition of new customers via new partners and reaching new audiences who find themselves excluded from the current credit system.

Following Plend’s launch  in July 2022, over GBP 40 million of loan applications have been processed through its lending platform and their loan book is increasing 20% month on month. With the recent funding and newly formed partnerships with Monevo and ClearScore, the company aims to more than double their lending by the end of 2022.

Plend’s developments

Plend has launched its first fully embedded ‘green finance’ product in 2022, supporting customers with low interest loans to purchase green energy installations such as solar panels and heat pumps via their partnership with MakeMyHouseGreen.

In May 2022, Ophelos has partnered with Plend. Both pending B-corporations, Plend and Ophelos are closely aligned in their commitment to building fairer, more accessible financial solutions with social impact at their core.

The partnership sees Ophelos transform how Plend manages the support of customers who may find themselves in arrears. Having experienced challenging debt management processes firsthand, Plend’s CEO sought a tech-driven collections partner whose ethics around debt resolution aligned with that of Plend’s purpose-driven approach to credit. Ophelos’ proprietary machine learning platform helps Plend to engage with and support its customers facing debt – giving them options to resolve their debts through manageable instalments via personalised repayment plans.

Using Open Banking technology, Plend utilises a fairer way to assess creditworthiness, dubbed ‘the PLEND Score’, which makes lending decisions on an individuals’ transaction history and spending behaviour, enabling Plend to tailor a loan to their unique needs.

Financial inclusion in UK

Research conducted by Opinium from over 4,500 respondents shows that 1 in 5 Brits say they feel locked out of the financial system, nearly 11 million people. Access to affordable credit is vital for an individual’s financial stability and resilience but the report findings exposes that some sections of the UK population are repeatedly being badly let down by the financial services industry; 38% of people from a black ethnic group and 32% from all ethnic groups combined feel that they can’t access financial services.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the problem of financial exclusion; more than a quarter (28%) of all Brits say they are now in a worse financial position as a result of the pandemic.

The flaws in the UK credit referencing system have long been recognised and traditional credit scoring methods often give an incomplete and outdated picture of an individual’s financial life, holding back over 20.3 million people in the UK from affordable financial services.