AI-powered credit technology firm Abound has secured up to £250 million in financing for consumer loans from Deutsche Bank, further strengthening its ability to offer fairer, more affordable credit to UK borrowers.
This latest funding, which will sit alongside Abound’s existing facilities from funders including Citi, Waterfall Asset Management and LuminArx, provides additional firepower to scale its operations, enhance financial inclusion, and modernise the lending sector.
In a world with more data available than ever before, it no longer makes sense to rely on statistical averages and outdated credit scores. In contrast, Abound’s pioneering cashflow underwriting platform, Render, uses AI-driven Open Banking insights to truly understand each borrower’s unique financial situation and affordability. By utilising this real-time financial data, Render also enables Abound to minimise its default rates and therefore offer lower rates to consumers. This new funding deal is yet more validation that this approach works at scale.
Abound was founded in 2020 by senior credit experts Gerald Chappell (ex-McKinsey Partner) and Dr Michelle He (ex-EY Director), and is now one of the UK’s fastest-growing fintechs, having issued over £650m in loans since launching.
Gerald Chappell, CEO and co-founder of Abound, said: “This new facility from Deutsche Bank further evidences the power of our bank-transaction data led AI credit decisioning technology. Open Banking has become a mature and widely adopted technology in the UK, and is now used by nearly 20 million people. As more and more countries around the world adopt Open Banking, we’re perfectly poised to start taking what’s worked in the UK, global.”
Dr Michelle He, COO and co-founder of Abound, said: “Abound’s diversified funding strategy ensures resilience in the evolving credit market, as we continue to expand, and, increasingly, provide our technology to other lenders.”
Abound announced it had turned profitable in April 2024, just 3 years after launching.
