B-North boosts risk assessment with Wiserfunding deal
B-North, a Manchester-based challenger bank, has selected Wiserfunding to support its risk grading.
B-North co-founders: Jonathan Thompson (left) and David Broadbent (right)
B-North focuses on lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The bank has yet to launch, but plans to open its doors in 2020.
Founded in 2018, the fintech is led by CEO and former Santander exec Jonathan Thompson, and chief financial officer Dave Broadbent.
The firm selected Wiserfunding to increase its confidence in assessing the credit profile of applicants.
Wiserfunding claims to use AI and cloud technology to source its unstructured data and generate viability scores. The firm says that has a 90% prediction accuracy when assessing the credit risk of SMEs.
B-North is deploying the new tools alongside manual underwriting techniques in a “best of both worlds” approach. The challenger is aiming to turnaround loans in less than 10 days.
The news follows the appointment of Rebecca Owen as B-North’s regional managing director. She will lead the bank’s first “lending pod”, due to open in Manchester in 2020.
“As we prepare to launch our UK regional SME lending bank, we can see that unsatisfied market demand is increasing, against a challenging economic backdrop where borrower choice is reducing,” says Jonathan Thompson, CEO of B-North.
“At a time like this it is even more important that we deploy dynamic underwriting strategies, and use the best technology to support our people in making great lending decisions.
“The fact that Wiserfunding specialises in the SME sector and allows us to draw on its innovative predictive capabilities, makes it a perfect fit for B-North and it’s goals.”
Related: UK SME lender B-North adds TruNarrative to its tech stack
