Deutsche Bank bets £250m on UK fintech Abound
Deutsche Bank announced on Thursday morning it had given a £250m backing to UK fintech Abound, boosting the firm’s lending capacity.
The latest round of funding compounds existing support from Citi, Waterfall Asset Management and LuminArx – and takes the fintech’s total credit ceiling to £1.6bn.
Abound said the additional capital would provide “firepower to scale its operations, enhance financial inclusion and modernise the lending sector”.
The firm – which leverages Open Banking and AI to provide borrowers with loans based on their capacity to repay – was founded in 2020 by a team of credit experts and turned profitable in April 2024, three years after launch.
The London-based business said the new funding from Deutsche would help power “the AI-led lending revolution.”
The fintech said its underwriting program, Render, allows it to minimise default rates and offer lower fees to consumers.
“This new funding deal is yet more validation that this approach works at scale,” the fintech said.
Chief executive and co-founder of Abound, Gerald Chappell, said: “This new facility from Deutsche Bank further evidences the power of our bank-transaction data led AI credit decisioning technology.
“Open Banking has become a mature and widely adopted technology in the UK, and is now used by nearly 20 million people.
“As more and more countries around the world adopt Open Banking, we are perfectly poised to start taking what’s worked in the UK, globally.”
Dr Michelle He, chief operating officer and co-founder of Abound, said: “Abound’s diversified funding strategy ensures resilience in the evolving credit market, as we continue to expand, and, increasingly, provide our technology to other lenders.”
Abound is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and currently offers loans between £1,000 and £20,000, which are repayable for up to eight years.
The firm is the consumer arm of Fintern Holdings, which also owns its smart loans technology Render.