ClearScore, a global leader in financial marketplaces, has partnered with Abound, one of the pioneers of Open Banking-powered loans, to bring ClearScore’s automated debt consolidation technology, Clearer, into Abound’s platform.
Clearer ensures that when a customer takes out a debt consolidation loan, the money is automatically used to pay off their existing debts, removing debt burdens plus the friction of settling multiple loans. Abound was a launch partner for Clearer in 2024 and has offered Clearer-powered debt consolidation loans on the ClearScore marketplace for two years. Abound is now embedding Clearer into its customer journey, allowing it to offer automated debt consolidation loans to a much wider audience.
The partnership will enable Abound to use Clearer to support thousands of borrowers with consolidating and repaying existing debts.
ClearScore’s research has found that more than 60% of people taking out consolidation loans failed to use at least half of the funds to repay their debts. Those borrowers were nearly three times more likely to fall behind on repayments than those who did repay their debts. By automatically settling debts as part of the application process, Clearer removes this risk entirely.
Following Stream and Monzo, Abound is the third lender to embed Clearer technology directly into its loan applications. To date, ClearScore has handled over £40 million in payments associated with Clearer-powered consolidation loans.
For lenders and partners, Clearer delivers:
- Guaranteed repayment of existing liabilities
- More accurate risk assessment and pricing
- Lower default risk
- Fully digital journeys with lower cost to serve
- Scalable support for Consumer Duty and foreseeable harm obligations
Tom Markham, chief commercial officer at ClearScore, said: “We are solving the historic issues with debt consolidation loans and our partnership with Abound will scale that benefit to a far larger audience. Abound has been with us from the start, partnering on our pilot phase to develop the technology, and we are delighted to extend that to now include white-labelling our technology to operate in Abound’s credit application journeys.”
Sam Power, chief growth officer at Abound, added: “We’ve been using Clearer for 2 years for our customers who originated via ClearScore’s marketplace. It’s a natural next step for us to start using Clearer to help more of our customers save money by consolidating higher cost debt. It’s simpler, safer and more effective, and it helps us support people who are often excluded from mainstream options.”
Source: openbankingexpo.com
