Under-served and self-employed: How collaboration can help solve this problem

Our report with PwC, “Overlooked and financially under-served”, helped us look into the challenges faced by the self-employed, and investigate what’s driving the trend of under-serving this population.

In our last post we highlighted some of the key challenges faced by those in alternative employment. The data shows there’s a fundamental gap in the market for the self-employed, sole traders, freelancers, and contractors. This is true both in terms of access to consumer credit (due to lower and less predictable incomes), and in terms of access to business credit, as a result of limited datasets and a small pool of lenders operating in this space.

We believe greater collaboration is one way in which we can address problems faced by both specific groups, and the wider under-served market. With 1 in 10 TotallyMoney customers identifying as self-employed, we recognised support or options available to this audience simply didn’t exist. To address this, we partnered with Cashplus Bank to launch the Cashplus Self-Employed card.

The Cashplus card is designed to plug the gap in the market and to offer access to credit for the self-employed. It’s been specifically designed with these customers in mind, offering a 1% cashback on purchases and a larger credit limit (up to £5,000) to support cash flow. Together with Cashplus Bank, we’ve designed a specific CRM journey, offering a bespoke experience to ensure this group has all the information to make an informed borrowing decision.

By integrating with Cashplus Bank via an API we were able to enable features such as pre-approval, guaranteed rates and guaranteed limits. Customers know their chances of acceptance and what they’ll be offered if accepted, which could impact their ability to borrow in future.

Finally, it’s important for the industry at large to recognise data, innovation and collaboration are powerful tools for fintechs, lenders, CRAs and regulators to drive change and help everyone move their finances forward.