Salad Money

Salad Money is a personal lending CDFI that provides affordable credit to low-income sub-prime public sector and other key workers in the UK. The company uses proprietary machine learning technology and open banking to analyse applicants’ disposable income and capacity to repay a loan from existing month to month income, therefore not relying on credit ratings that typically exclude sub-prime borrowers from access to traditional credit markets. It has been built as a for-profit, social enterprise reliant on private investment and commercial borrowing. Founded with the intention of offering a more ethical alternative to the predatory payday lenders that its borrowers would otherwise have to turn to, the company operates in a sector that has not been without controversy. While Salad Money is able to offer customer interest rates that are far better than payday lenders (~70% APRs vs. 1000% APRs) there can still be public critiques of this approach. The company has steadily built a loan book that now nears £20M. In order to unlock additional commercial lending capital, Salad Money was in need of a subordinate loan facility. As the structure was beyond our own risk tolerance, we were able to secure a partial loan guarantee from Fair4All, a non-profit initiative created to catalyze more responsible lending to underserved segments in the UK. This allowed us to make a $1.5M subordinate loan to the company.