Pulse from Aire: the opportunity the ecosystem is waiting for

As we launch Pulse, Founder and CEO Aneesh Varma reflects on the milestone it marks for the business — and for the people it stands to benefit.

At Aire we’ve never shied away from the hard problems we’re here to solve.

We exist to make credit equitable for everyone: free from bias and free from prejudice — for the world. We’re resolute on doing this the right way, however long it takes: always putting our approach to regulation and our laser focus on the needs of the consumer above a quick win or a fast result.

In 2016, two years after I founded Aire, we received FCA authorisation as the UK’s fourth credit bureau. Now, with over $11 billion of credit scored and operational in both the UK and the US, we’re on our way — but the challenge isn’t easy and the journey remains long.

“Now more than ever, the need for consumer equity is clear.”

Now more than ever, the need for consumer equity is clear. The headlines speak for themselves: the Wall Street Journal’s ‘flying blind into a credit storm’ piece summarises many. As lenders look to protect themselves through the sudden fog caused by Covid-19, they must seek better navigation, better tools and ultimately better data to understand their customers.

Gathered not from the bureau, or from social media, but from the individual, we believe the best data rests with the consumer themselves. We call this first-party data and it is both unique and powerful in offering lenders the most up-to-date view of their customer imaginable: the full story, the holistic picture, the truth.

From furlough or redundancy to an increase in hours due to a flourishing business, first-party data provides us with the individual set of circumstances that contribute to an overall picture of financial health.

Most importantly, it also starts to shift the power balance. It democratises the ability for the individual to contribute to their own story and to have a say in how lenders perceive their circumstances — delivering the system upgrade the credit ecosystem so clearly requires. This is about getting personal, at scale.

The challenge for lenders

As we all adapt to the changes in our lives, lenders are watching and waiting.

But…

• when traditional credit bureau data takes three months to record change, how can they see the needs of their existing customers to serve them correctly?
• when manual follow up costs lenders time and money, and can yield little tangible outcome, what should they focus their resources towards?
• how can they responsibly support their customers with the credit they need, confident that their customers’ current financial situation won’t push them into further debt in the weeks and months to come?

These are concerns we’ve heard from lenders repeatedly over the last few months.

An obsessive approach to research is built into how we work at Aire: it informs our approach to customers, our product development and the prioritisation of what we build to realise our mission. Winning Risk.net’s ‘Most Innovative Vendor’ accolade at the Risk Technology Awards in June 2020, it’s an approach we’ve become recognised for. Internally, it’s narrowed our focus, it’s galvanised our team and it’s made us move faster, determined to do what we can, as fast as we can, to help consumers sooner.

The culmination of this is Pulse from Aire. Launched to the market last month, Pulse provides lenders with rapid, actionable insight on the current financial situation of their existing customers, fast.

A credit pulse check on a lender’s existing customers

Quick, convenient and FCA-regulated, Pulse provides a truly holistic view of a lender’s existing customers, gathered from the most up-to-date data source available to them, the consumer themselves.

Pulse signals a consumer’s risk of financial difficulty to lenders and provides current validated disposable income levels to build that real-time picture lenders can’t get anywhere else.

Best of all, Pulse uses cutting edge technology to deliver this — replacing manual outreach with digital follow-up, co-branded for each lender so the approach is trusted and consistent with their existing treatment of customers.

“Replicating the most pro-active human approach to customer management with the best of technology…”

Replicating the most pro-active human approach to customer management with the best of technology, Pulse offers scale and efficiency to manage that burden. In extensive testing of Pulse, this discreet means of digital engagement saved lenders between £10 and £60 per customer allowing them to safely attend to customers by replacing manual customer outreach.

We’re still in the eye of the storm here — the true scale of impact Covid-19 will have on consumers both here in the UK as well as across the world, we just don’t know. What we can be certain of however is the absolute necessity for lenders of see their customer’s most up-to-date financial situation.

And while critical for lenders today, that need won’t go away. Our future citizens are waiting. We can’t keep them waiting too long.

Introducing Pulse from Aire, credit insight in a heartbeat.

— Aneesh, on behalf of Aire.