Newcastle fintech Noggin HQ has obtained Noggin HQ FCA authorisation as a credit reference agency, enabling it to supply cashflow-based credit data to lenders across the UK, alongside a £2.3 million oversubscribed seed round to fund its push into wider market adoption.
The company says the authorisation places it among only a handful of firms to receive a credit reference agency licence from the Financial Conduct Authority in the past decade. That is the company’s characterisation, and it is not independently verifiable from the report alone, but the claim is specific enough to invite scrutiny, and, if accurate, it does mark a genuine barrier to entry cleared.
What the Noggin HQ FCA authorisation actually unlocks
The authorisation means Noggin HQ can now formally provide its permissioned banking transaction data to FCA-authorised lenders as an input to credit decisions. The company’s pitch is that open banking data (drawn from a borrower’s actual account activity) gives a more current picture of affordability than the backward-looking credit file models that dominate the market. Lenders using Noggin HQ’s data can, in theory, identify creditworthy applicants who have thin files, limited borrowing histories, or periods living abroad.
The report cites 3.2 million UK adults declined credit in the two years to May 2024 as the addressable problem. The source of that figure is not named, so it should be read as context rather than a verified input. The broader point, that traditional credit reference data struggles with people whose financial lives do not fit older templates, is well-established territory in open banking debate.
The funding round and who backed it
Blackfinch Ventures led the seed round, with continued participation from Oxford Capital and Bethnal Green Ventures, plus a group of angel investors. One of those angels is Alastair Douglas, identified in the report as former chief executive officer of TotallyMoney. Douglas’s involvement is notable in terms of sector credibility: someone with direct experience of consumer credit product-building backing the infrastructure play rather than a consumer-facing app.
The round follows a £710,000 pre-seed raise led by Oxford Capital, also with Bethnal Green Ventures participation. The company says the seed capital will support the move from pilots into broader market rollout. That is an early stage: pilots having worked is not the same as commercial-scale adoption, and the investment case rests on lenders being willing to integrate a new data source alongside, or in place of, incumbent credit bureau feeds.
Hugh Bartlett, principal at Blackfinch Ventures, said the firm looks for businesses using technology to solve “real, persistent problems,” and described Noggin’s approach as helping credit assessment “evolve beyond traditional models by using richer, more up-to-date data.” That is the thesis, clearly. Whether lenders convert from pilots to contracts at scale is what remains to be demonstrated.
The founders and the origin of the product
Noggin HQ was founded by Evangeline Atkinson and Laura Mills, who the report describes as childhood friends. Both were declined for credit despite being in full-time employment and meeting rent and bill obligations, the kind of thin-file problem their own product is designed to address. Paul Miller, managing director of Bethnal Green Ventures, said the firm first backed Noggin HQ through its accelerator programme in 2021.
Atkinson, co-founder of the company, said: ‘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.’
David Mott, founder partner of Oxford Capital, described the FCA authorisation as ‘an important milestone’ and pointed to ‘the strength of its early lender engagement’ as evidence of demand. That lender engagement has so far been at pilot stage, which is worth keeping in mind: engagement and commitment to integrate are different things. The next phase, converting that engagement into signed data agreements and live lender deployments, is where the product’s commercial case will be tested.
