Aire, UK-based company that provides an alternative way for lenders to understand and score credit applicants, announced on Thursday it has teamed up with Toyota Financial Services to launch an evaluation with TFS for its Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform. According to Aire, the collaboration is designed to prove the effectiveness of Aire’s technology to assess the financial situation of TFS customers within ‘customer delinquency.’ While sharing details about the partnership, Operations Director Fran Kenny at Toyota Financial Services stated:
“At TFS we are dedicated to exploring better ways of working to benefit our customers’ ever changing needs. Working with Aire you can be sure that you are ahead of the curve in using the most up-to-date approach to understanding your customer’s situation. Aire has adapted its credit assessment technology so that it exactly fits our needs, and we will use this evaluation to build the best solution possible in close collaboration with the Aire team.”
Aire’s Head of Partnerships Matt Davies then commented:
“After our recent announcements on partnerships with a major online retailer and a P2P lender, we are adding yet another sector and use case to our growing number of partnerships. The recent months have proven that our platform is truly universal: we are on a mission to help lenders and borrowers find the right level of credit in every sector, at every stage of the credit cycle.”
Aire also reported that the announcement comes at the same time as the publication of new research findings from an online survey of 2,000 UK adults, which was conducted for Aire by independent research agency Populus. The findings reported the importance of a more sophisticated approach to credit assessments in the car leasing space, especially for groups such as freelancers who often find it harder to secure credit due to the nature of their work status. While the average payment for monthly car leases in the UK is £93 per month, freelancers pay almost 30% more with £120 on average. Aneesh Varma, co-founder and CEO of Aire, added:
“The higher payments for freelancers are down to two factors: On the one hand, many freelancers are self-employed drivers, and their cars therefore need to be of higher value and quality. On the other hand, the average taxi driver with their own car will find it harder to get an appropriate deal for their car lease, simply because many credit scorers have not yet adapted to the way many of us work and live today.”