Aro, the UK’s go-to embedded finance partner for brands, has today announced it will be adding open-data lender, Plend, to its market-leading lending panel.

Plend will join Aro’s digital lending marketplace, which provides unsecured personal loans, credit cards, secured loans and other financial products. The open-data lender will be directly integrated into the Aro platform, where customers are connected with over 70 of the UK’s leading lenders and service providers to help them achieve their financial objectives.

Unlike traditional credit assessments, which are based on incomplete and biased data sets, Aro’s data-driven matching platform ensures an even greater number of UK consumers are provided with the best credit solutions whilst ensuring they’re only presented with offers that can feasibly work for them and providing lenders with stronger applicants.

This partnership will enable Aro to help more customers to gain access the financial products they need by widening the panel of lenders who offer innovative credit solutions. The partnership reflects Aro and Plend’s joint dedication to creating a financial system that benefits a wider range of people and helps address issues related to financial inequality.

Today’s news comes in the same month as Aro’s company-wide rebrand, as the business continues to reaffirm its mission to driving a more inclusive credit industry through its award-winning embedded finance platform.

Emma Steeley, Chief Executive Officer at Aro said, “We are excited to be announcing our partnership with Plend today. With more consumers than ever looking for credit, we are thrilled to be working with an ethical lender who shares Aro’s values and is also an advocate of the transformative power Open Banking promises with secure access to real-time financial information.”

Robert Pasco, Chief Executive Officer at Plend remarks, “Consumers in the UK are facing an increasingly uphill battle in accessing affordable and longer-term credit solutions. Central to our credit scoring process is a commitment to positive customer outcomes, and our partnership with Aro enables us to offer a lifeline to a broader audience in need of genuinely affordable loans. We are super excited to join forces with Aro, a like-minded partner, whose technology-led approach unlocks greater value for customers across the UK at a time of growing need.”