Noggin HQ, a credit reference agency, has raised £2.3 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Blackfinch Ventures, with participation from Oxford Capital, Bethnal Green Ventures and several domain-specific angel investors, including Alastair Douglas, former chief executive officer of TotallyMoney.
Permissioned banking transaction data sits at the centre of the product, which helps lenders identify creditworthy customers that traditional systems miss. People with thin credit files, limited borrowing histories or time spent living abroad can appear risky, even when their banking data shows they can afford to repay. Feeding cashflow-based credit data into lending decisions allows those customers to be assessed on what they can afford now rather than declined on an incomplete record.
The raise comes as Noggin HQ successfully obtains its credit referencing authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority, allowing its cashflow-based credit data to be supplied to FCA-authorised lenders. That authorisation makes Noggin HQ one of only a handful of companies to obtain a licence to become a credit reference agency in the United Kingdom in the last 10 years. In the two years to May 2024, 3.2 million adults in the United Kingdom were declined credit.
Childhood friends Evangeline Atkinson and Laura Mills founded Noggin HQ after both were declined for credit despite being in full-time work and paying rent and bills. The Newcastle-based business previously raised £710,000 in pre-seed funding, led by Oxford Capital with support from Bethnal Green Ventures and other investors. This latest investment will support Noggin HQ as it moves from successful pilots into wider market adoption.
The UK credit market has changed. Consumers earn, spend and borrow in more complex ways than ever before, but much of the credit referencing infrastructure still reflects an older economy. Now that we're an authorised credit reference agency, we're energised to be supporting more nuanced credit checks for the consumers the system has historically underserved.
At Blackfinch Ventures, we look for businesses using technology to solve real, persistent problems, and Noggin is a strong example of that. Its approach helps credit assessment evolve beyond traditional models by using richer, more up-to-date data to build a clearer picture of borrowers. We believe that Noggin's solution can help lenders make more informed decisions while widening access for people who may be overlooked by existing approaches.
Noggin HQ is tackling a large and persistent problem in consumer credit: too many people are judged on incomplete or outdated data. Its credit reference agency authorisation is an important milestone, and the strength of its early lender engagement shows there is clear demand for more accurate, data-led decisioning. We believe Eva, Laura and the team have the potential to build a category-defining credit infrastructure business from the North East.
Credit scoring is broken because it only looks backwards, judging people on a patchy record of their past, held in a system built to keep data in the hands of companies, not the people it belongs to. Open Banking turns that on its head: real-time data that shows what someone can actually afford today, making decisions quicker, fairer and more accurate. That's why I've backed Noggin. Eva and Laura are proving you can build a great business and make credit work better for lenders and customers at the same time.
