B-North Chooses Wiserfunding To Help Grade SMB Risk

As an important part of its underwriting strategy, B-North has teamed with Wiserfunding for small- and medium-sized business (SMB) credit risk assessment. The relationship will assist the lender in having greater confidence in evaluating SMB credit profiles and also help its underwriters in arriving at improved lending decisions, according to an announcement.

B-North CEO Jonathan Thompson said in the announcement, “As we prepare to launch our UK regional [SMB] lending bank, we can see that unsatisfied market demand is increasing, against a challenging economic backdrop where borrower choice is reducing. 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.”

Wiserfunding provides a credit risk evaluation technology that makes use of cloud as well as artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discover information and make an Altman SME Z-score. It will join B-North’s current roster of technologies like the deposit and loan origination application of nCino, the banking infrastructure of Mambu or the RegTech solution of TruNarrative.

Wiserfunding CEO and Co-Founder Dr. Gabriele Sabato said, “B-North represents one of the most exciting and credible specialist [SMB] banks that is about to launch in the UK. So, we are really pleased to have the opportunity to support them in building their business.”

The news comes B-North had named its inaugural regional managing director, Rebecca Owen, who will reportedly be tasked with creating and rolling out the firm’s earliest lending pod that is scheduled to open this year in Manchester.

In January, news surfaced that B-North had notched $2.6 million from current and new investors via GrowthFunders and Crowdcube. The newest funding comes on top of the £4.2 million the company notched in past rounds.

The FinTech, which was started by former Atom Bank and Santander executives in 2018, has sought its banking license per a report in January. The company said in past statements that it would harness the funding “to continue the planned expansion of its workforce and infrastructure.”

At the time, news also surfaced that the FinTech had tapped Ron Emerson to serve in the role of chairman.