Loansy, a lendtech startup, has raised a £4,000,000 seed round from an undisclosed investor to build the future of short-term lending. The funding will allow Loansy to bring its prototype, which uses AI to peruse the facebook photos, status updates, and friends of prospective borrowers in order to predict their creditworthiness, to the high street.

Loansy, which was self-funded by CEO David Rosenberg through 2018, has been operating quietly until recently. This new round of funding will be used to roll-out Loansy’s product, promote it across the UK, and expand the team to support anticipated demand, beginning in Q2 2018.

While short-term loans, sometimes called payday loans, are often the target of negative attention due to rates some see as usurious, the average profit margin of payday lenders is conservative. For example, Cash America, the largest lender in the USA, posted net margins of 0.87% in 2016.

The primary determinant of a short-term credit lender’s profit margin is their ability to correctly assess default risk. In 2016, Wonga, a now-defunct UK-based lender which developed its own proprietary software to assess default risk, posted 61.2% gross margins. Loansy’s use of data gleaned from social networks will allow it to generate an even greater return on capital for investors.

David Rosenberg, CEO, added, “China is in many ways 10 years ahead of the west, but our social credit score technology is on par with China’s, and in some ways even better. This adds tremendous value to the lending process. The data available publicly on Facebook will disrupt the entire industry. The end result will be lower rates for borrowers.”

About Loansy (www.loansy.co.uk)

Loansy is a UK-based lendtech startup which uses artificial intelligence and data from social networks in order to accurately predict the creditworthiness of prospective borrowers. For borrowers, Loansy’s “social credit score” technology means lower rates. To learn more, visit www.loansy.co.uk