Atom bank teams up with Credit Kudos to support small businesses

By Megha Bhattacharya

Atom bank today announced that it has partnered with FinTech Credit Kudos with an aim to boost its open data capabilities for business loan affordability assessments and to deliver £1 billion in lending over the next two years. Atom bank stated that it will be using Credit Kudos’ categorisation and risk insights to automate underwriting assessments, enabling real-time decisions and improving the customer experience compared to traditional paper-based processes.

Edward Twiddy, Chief Customer Officer at Atom bank, said, “Our partnership with Credit Kudos will allow us to further expand the range and accelerate the pace of our lending. We’re delighted to be working with another fintech challenger to bring insights based on Open Banking data into the heart of Atom’s decision making – both for business customers and for our award winning mortgages. After a year when we’ve tripled the amount of business lending on our books, we’re now well set to take Atom on to even greater levels of efficiency and engagement thanks to the investment we’re making with Credit Kudos.”

According to Atom bank, the collaboration will allow it to immediately verify income and credit repayment affordability for small businesses. The partnership initially focuses on secured small business lending with plans to expand this to unsecured business lending and to support its residential mortgage lending by the end of 2021.

Freddy Kelly, CEO and founder of Credit Kudos said, “Over the past year it’s been increasingly difficult for lenders to understand the current financial situation of individuals and businesses. Traditional credit reports are not up-to-date or extensive enough, but Open Banking data allows us to provide lenders with a real-time, holistic overview of an individual or businesses’ finances, as well as a prediction of future circumstances. Our partnership will help Atom bank make significant advances to its services and support even more small businesses in the coming months and years.”

Recently, Atom bank announced a collaboration with Open Finance platform Plaid in a bid to power the launch of open banking services to its customers along with a streamlined loan application journey and faster decision making. The collaboration will enable Plaid’s customers to share their banking data securely with Atom.