Fintech innovator Good With and Fair4All Finance are collaborating on a strategic pilot project to tackle financial exclusion in the UK, aiming to unlock access to affordable credit for underserved communities. The pilot integrates Good With’s financial health assessment tool into the customer journeys of community lenders, enriching credit data with psychometric and open banking insights to provide a fairer assessment of applicants with “thin” or adverse credit files.
Through retrospective analysis, Good With developed a machine learning model that successfully identified a significant number of creditworthy applicants who were previously rejected by traditional scoring.
Proving social impact and commercial soundness
The new data model delivers measurable improvements in prediction accuracy and inclusion rates, proving that enhanced data can identify commercially viable customers who are currently overlooked.
Key outcomes of the retrospective analysis include:
- An 11 per cent uplift in arrears prediction accuracy compared to the lenders’ existing models alone.
- The ability to correctly identify 60 per cent of “missed good” customers—applicants previously rejected who were actually highly unlikely to default.
- Improved lending portfolio quality by identifying 13 per cent of accepted customers who later went into arrears or defaulted.
“Traditional credit scores don’t tell the whole story,” said Gabriela Isas, chief executive and founder of Good With. “Our Good With inside (GWi) service provides a richer view of financial health. This collaboration proves that with better data, we can make decisions that are commercially sound and socially impactful. We are opening doors for people who have been systematically overlooked.”
Building an Equitable Financial System
The pilot is gaining momentum with a growing pipeline of community lenders and includes the development of a new underwriting dashboard, co-designed with underwriters to facilitate faster, more informed decisions. Crucially, declined applicants are offered a referral to the free Good With mobile app for personalised financial wellbeing support and education.
Diane Burridge, director of innovation and development at Fair4All Finance, commented that the pilot directly aligns with their mission to increase access to fair financial products. “The outcomes are incredibly promising, proving data innovation can create a more equitable financial system. We are proud to support Good With as they scale this important work with community lenders,” Burridge said.
By combining psychometric and open banking data with real-world repayment performance, Good With is creating a more inclusive and accurate credit decision-making process, moving the industry closer to a financial system where creditworthiness is based on a richer, more holistic view of financial health.
