If you’ve been feeling like credit scores are the bane of your existence, you may not be alone. After all, most lenders use these scores to gauge your creditworthiness and their lending risk. As a result, credit scores often narrow down your borrowing options and leave you with limited choices, which may not always suit your financial needs.
As a result, credit scores often narrow down your borrowing options and leave you with limited choices, which may not always suit your financial needs.
Thankfully, with the advancements in fintech, the credit market has undergone a positive transformation that’s brought borrowers much relief. This is because these changes have brought about a paradigm shift in lending algorithms, which do not rely solely on credit scores.
Using Alternative but Reliable Borrower Data
Amidst rising prices and inflationary pressures, borrowing in the country has gone up significantly. As of April 2025, 14% of the population has reportedly relied on borrowing credit in some form to meet daily expenses and utilities.
This growing demand and increasing application of innovative tech products and services have given lenders some room to introduce more affordable credit options. For ethical lenders like Salad, who have been using alternative sources of data to gauge borrower creditworthiness, this has been a positive step towards credit inclusion.
This data goes beyond credit scores and histories and often extracts information from open banking data and employment history. With this broader database, lenders are able to meet borrower needs more effectively while managing their lending risks comfortably.
Financial Assessments Based on Affordability
Many find themselves in financially distressing situations due to a lack of proper budgeting and financial literacy. These may lead to costly mistakes like choosing the wrong credit or getting into debt. However, these mistakes do not have to define one’s financial future.
Ethical lenders are playing a huge part in this, shifting the lens on assessment criteria from focusing on past mistakes to loan affordability. What does this mean for you? If you have poor credit, have debt or have an unsteady source of income, you can now choose from personalised loan options without having to worry about loan costs.
Ethical and inclusive lenders will customise their loan criteria to offer you credit options that you can afford, without burdening yourself financially. So even if you didn’t have a great credit score, you could still access loans that are tailored to your needs in a fast, hassle-free manner.
AI-Led Technology and Automation
AI has been playing an instrumental role in transforming the fintech market, with many lenders now using machine learning models and AI to access alternative data. The applications for AI in fintech are numerous and have been especially helpful for lenders in speeding up loan assessments and application processes.
This process was previously time-consuming as it was done manually and often led to delayed loan assessments. As a result, many borrowers couldn’t access credit in time for their emergencies or needs, defeating the purpose of credit availability.
That has changed now because AI-driven technologies are helping lenders sort through vast amounts of borrower data in a few minutes. This has greatly minimised the time spent on verification, due diligence and risk assessments, allowing for informed and quick decision-making for lenders.