Aire raises $11 million in Series B funding to accelerate growth and support US expansion

Aire, a fintech startup which aims to make credit fairer for consumers, and more valuable to lenders, has successfully closed $11 million in Series B round of funding to support a rapid growth phase including investment in its credit insight engine and expansion in the US. The funding was led by by leading European enterprise investor Crane Venture Partners with strategic investments from Experian Ventures and Orange Digital Ventures. The new round of investment follows the $5.5 million Series A raised in July 2017 led by White Star Capital and Sunstone Capital, who also joined this round. This new funding milestone comes two years after Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approval and growth into a 40 person team. To date, Aire has scored $10 billion in credit, seeing credit approvals increase by up to 19% without increasing risk appetite.

Founded in 2014 by Aneesh Varma, Jon Bundy, and Srini Sundaram, Aire is committed to helping people with the world of credit. They work with financial institutions by enhancing their ability to reach more customers and serve them responsibly. They are authorised & regulated in the UK by the FCA to provide credit references as one of the newest entrants in this sector. Aire is a new credit assessment service that reveals the bigger picture. So lenders make more informed decisions, and borrowers get fairer access to credit.

Since receiving Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approval, the company has grown from a start-up with eight people to a fully-fledged operation with a headcount approaching 40. Along the way, it has forged numerous alliances with notable financial institutions such as Toyota Financial Services and online retailer N Brown, alongside high-street banks. These partnerships have underlined the versatility of Aire’s technology, which can be integrated at various stages of the credit lifecycle. To date, Aire’s sophisticated algorithmic model has scored over $10 billion of credit across various categories of consumer credit, which gives a competitive advantage as the model improves with the data quantity and quality. Helping lenders access more customers without increasing their risk appetite, Aire has seen credit approvals increase by up to 19%.

Aire Co-Founder and CEO, Aneesh Varma, said: “Aire is built on the premise that empowering consumers to play an active role in their credit assessment is the only way to give lenders a comprehensive view with which to make a decision. Since launching five years ago we have come a long way in bringing along the credit ecosystem: FCA regulation; scalable technology; proven uplift for lending partners; and funding. Today’s announcement is a significant milestone in the Aire journey and showcases how much the market is paying attention, with the support of the largest credit bureau. This Series B funding is allowing us to push the Aire philosophy further into new markets, such as the US, as well as new sectors.”

Krishna Visvanathan, founding partner at Crane Venture Partners, explained, “We’ve worked closely with the Aire team since inception, investing in the company based on our firm belief in their vision to reimagine credit decisioning for the 21st century. Aire’s unique contextual decisioning methodology combines direct consumer engagement, new data sources and its dynamic algorithmic model to provide lenders with a better way to evaluate and make credit decisions. Aire is yet another great example of a category-leading enterprise software company formed in Europe that is fundamentally changing an industry, and we are proud to support its new phase of growth.”

The foundation of Aire’s product is deep consumer credit risk knowledge combined with new consumer-supplied data, leveraging machine learning in a regulated environment. This unique combination is driving Aire’s market acceptance and has encouraged the funding from Crane Venture Partners, Experian Ventures, and Orange Digital Ventures.