The UK’s first, and biggest rent recognition platform CreditLadder, and leading financial network Bud have today launched a partnership designed to help customers become more creditworthy and get on the property ladder.
Bud offers a connected network that helps banks to collaborate with fintechs on creating new experiences for their customers. It’s a service that Bud has developed and piloted with HSBC/First Direct since February 2018.
The partnership will allow customers to access the CreditLadder service directly from within their banking apps via the Bud platform, enabling customers who are tenants to have their monthly rental payments added to their credit history.
CreditLadder and Bud were both final stage winners of the HM Treasury’s Rent Recognition Challenge. Designed to help fund, and develop, fintech platforms to enable tenants to improve their creditworthiness and get on the property ladder. It is the first service of its kind to be added to Bud’s list of financial service providers.
Alan Walsh, Network & Partnerships at Bud said “About 80% of our team rent their homes, it’s their biggest monthly outgoing and they have long histories of making those payments on-time, month after month. It was just wrong that this data couldn’t be used to help them achieve what they wanted in life so it’s great to be working with the team at CreditLadder to address the situation.”
Launched today, the partnership takes advantage of the recently-introduced Open Banking initiative, which enables bank customers to share their spending data with third parties should they wish to, and access a wider range of appropriate financial products and deals.
“There is huge momentum within both the banking and tech sectors at the moment to help a greater number of people access more affordable credit, and our partnership with Bud is a ground-breaking initiative that builds on this,” says CreditLadder CEO Sheraz Dar.
For more from The Fintech Times on tracking credit scores, read; Why are we more interested in how many steps we take rather than our credit score?
