Credit Scorer Aire announces high profile partnership agreements

Credit Scoring specialist Aire has announced the closing of a $5million funding round, led by Sunstone Capital alongside White Star. In conjunction with closing the latest round of funding, Aire today also announces two new high-profile partnerships across different sub-sectors of consumer credit: Aire is embarking on projects with the pioneering financial services company Zopa as well as the world-leading car finance business Toyota Financial Services.

Zopa and Toyota Financial Services join other sub-sector partners including credit cards and high street banks, reaffirming the reputation of versatility associated with Aire’s technology which can be applied at various stages of the credit cycle.

Aire’s products such as the Interactive Virtual Interview (IVI) can be applied and integrated to help lenders and high street banks better understand a wide range of credit applicants, many of whom have thin-file credit histories such as first-time borrowers and self-employed or freelance workers. In turn, this approach to financial inclusion allows financial institutions to serve more consumers without having to increase their risk thresholds.

The business, whose focus is to make the old-fashioned credit scoring system fit for a new generation of borrowers, has to date successfully scored over $5 billion of credit across various categories of consumer credit. Aire’s expansion has resulted in a necessary recruitment drive and has allowed Aire to continuously enhance the accuracy of its algorithmic underwriting, and emulate the capabilities of human underwriters through machine learning.

This proven track record in establishing meaningful credit scores for various segments in the market, paired with gaining full Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approval in September 2016 were key factors that contributed to gaining the confidence of investors.

Aire’s founder and CEO Aneesh Varma said “Aire has stood for an idea that people should have equal opportunities for financial products despite changing realities of work, lifestyle and careers in this modern economy. This new funding round is strong vindication that we are making the right progress towards that goal.  The last year has been exceptionally positive with the FCA authorisation, new partnerships, increasing data volumes and now the funding to go into new markets. We are keen to bring Aire to as many people as we can, so there is still a busy time ahead of us on this mission.”