Credit Unions in the UK and Ireland set to benefit from new OMNIO KESHO partnership with Credit Kudos

Omnio, the Banking as a Service platform FinTech, has announced that its credit union business KESHO has agreed a partnership with Credit Kudos, an FCA-authorised challenger credit reference agency and Open Banking Account Information Service Provider (AISP). Through Credit Kudos’ direct connections to the UK’s largest banks – via Open Banking – the company helps lenders, brokers, and financial institutions make better and faster credit decisions based on real-time, detailed data and insights. The move yet again demonstrates Omnio KESHO’s commitment to its customers to provide meaningful analytics tools to the Credit Union sector.

The partnership between KESHO and Credit Kudos represents another important step on the roadmap to deliver better products and services to the Credit Union industry. By providing more data and analysis in real time to ensure that lending is fair and equitable, Credit Unions will now be able to lend money with improved insights and better risk management. These richer insights will enable Credit Unions to further protect themselves from economic shocks and deliver improved outcomes to their member base.

Speaking about the new partnership this week, Lindsay Ward, Executive Director for KESHO Credit Union Sector said; “One of the biggest challenges for our clients is how to mitigate the risk of lending. Although no decision will be truly risk-free, we will always strive to give our clients the tools to make the most informed decision possible. Thanks to our partnership with Credit Kudos, our clients now have a suite of data and analytics tools at their disposal to add another layer of confidence to their decisions, reducing exposure, whilst lending in a fair and equitable manner. This partnership is another significant measure to maintain Omnio KESHO’s position as the most innovative and influential Credit Union technology business in the UK and Ireland.”

Credit Kudos is transforming the credit scoring system using Open Banking data to understand a borrower’s financial wellbeing and habits. By aggregating and interpreting a borrower’s transaction data, Credit Kudos helps lenders assess creditworthiness and therefore lend safely and responsibly. Its insights go beyond traditional credit scoring, transforming complex sets of data into an easy-to-use, comprehensive view of a borrower’s creditworthiness to help institutions responsibly increase loan acceptances and reduce the number of defaults.

Sheenagh Young, Chief Executive of South Manchester Credit Union commented: “I am delighted to discover that Credit Kudos have now linked up with Omnio Kesho to widen access for credit unions to their services. We worked on a pilot with Freddy and Matt in their start up days and it has been fascinating to watch their vision – to use Open Banking data to support thoughtful lending decisions – become reality. These tools will equip credit unions to deepen our innovative digital approach to community lending.”

Freddy Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Credit Kudos, added: “Our mission is to transform the credit reference system to provide fairer credit for all. I’m delighted to see the insights developed with Serve & Protect Credit Union as part of the HM Treasury backed Affordable Credit Challenge delivered at scale to other affordable credit providers. We are proud to be working with KESHO to continue to support Credit Unions to assess creditworthiness and help more people access responsible credit, when they need it. This partnership is an important step towards helping those often excluded from financial services have greater financial security in today’s uncertain climate.”