https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/news Insight on credit risk, affordability, open banking and payments for UK lenders, from Credit Canary. en-GB Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:53:06 +0000 https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/direct-debit-vs-commercial-vrp https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/direct-debit-vs-commercial-vrp Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Direct Debit and commercial VRP both collect recurring payments, but they suit different jobs. A practical comparison of reach, settlement, control and the honest trade-offs, and why you rarely have to pick just one. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/arrears-collection-pay-by-bank https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/arrears-collection-pay-by-bank Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Collecting arrears on a card adds a percentage fee and chargeback risk to a payment from someone already behind. Pay by Bank collects the same money by a bank link, for a fixed cost and no chargeback. Here is when to use it. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/settlement-accounts-explained https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/settlement-accounts-explained Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 If you hold money that belongs to someone else, a settlement or virtual account is how inbound payments reconcile on arrival and client money stays segregated. What they are, who needs them, and what orchestration adds. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/cost-of-unreferenced-faster-payments https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/cost-of-unreferenced-faster-payments Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Faster Payments is instant and final. The problem was never speed, it is the payment that lands with no useful reference and takes finance a day to place. Where the cost hides, and how to remove it. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/direct-debit-indemnity-claims https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/direct-debit-indemnity-claims Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The Direct Debit Guarantee lets a customer reclaim a payment from their bank. That indemnity exposure is real, often unbudgeted, and best kept in one view. What it is and how good collection reduces it. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/one-reconciled-ledger https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/one-reconciled-ledger Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Run four rails through four providers and you get four portals and a reconciliation job that never closes. The case for posting every movement to one reconciled ledger, which is what payments orchestration is really for. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/mortgage-lenders-short-of-confidence https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/mortgage-lenders-short-of-confidence Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 July's Bank of England data shows mortgage approvals falling while household borrowing keeps growing and more homes come to market. The gap isn't affordability, it's uncertainty in how lenders measure it, and that's something lenders can fix without waiting for a rate cut. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/uk-cusos-what-it-will-take https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/uk-cusos-what-it-will-take Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lessons UK credit unions can learn from their US counterparts on technology adoption, growth, and member engagement. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/why-uk-cant-scale-financial-inclusion-pilots https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/why-uk-cant-scale-financial-inclusion-pilots Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 UK financial inclusion pilots keep ending instead of scaling. Build-operate-transfer is how infrastructure and energy solved the same problem, and how the next generation of inclusion pilots should be designed. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/financial-inclusion-cost-of-indecision https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/financial-inclusion-cost-of-indecision Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Auto-enrolment reached 90% because government mandated it. The Saving Gateway died because it funded it. Why financial inclusion keeps waiting for a cheque. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/consumer-duty-outcomes-monitoring https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/consumer-duty-outcomes-monitoring Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The FCA's July review moved the standard from having management information to evidencing what it changed. Why lenders stall between knowing and actin https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/burnham-credit-union-reset https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/burnham-credit-union-reset Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Andy Burnham is days from No. 10 and no politician has done more for credit unions. But his support casts them as social policy plumbing. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/brokers-front-end-data-opportunity https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/brokers-front-end-data-opportunity Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The FCA is asking mortgage brokers to own more of the front end. Most see a liability, it's actually the most valuable asset a broker could own, and the route to cheaper pricing, higher status and better-paid deals. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/reinventing-the-scorecard https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/reinventing-the-scorecard Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 In an AI era the credit scorecard stops being a static regression artifact and becomes a living thing, fluid, agent-driven and fused with payments. H https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/behaviour-is-not-vulnerability https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/behaviour-is-not-vulnerability Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A bank CRCO told me there's too much consumer protection in the UK. The FOS's new claims-firm fees prove what the real problem is: a market that can't https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/private-credit-quality-data-origination https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/private-credit-quality-data-origination Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Private credit is shifting from deploying capital at pace to deploying it with precision. Why quality data at origination is the real moat, and what it means for UK consumer lenders. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/small-sum-lending-lessons-from-around-the-world https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/small-sum-lending-lessons-from-around-the-world Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 UK lenders could be making around £2bn of affordable, compliant small-sum loans every year, and aren't. Five product models, from Australia to Brazil, that show how to close the gap. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/financial-lives-2035 https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/financial-lives-2035 Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Three national initiatives, a charity-funded referral engine, a money coach in every credit union, and AI-enabled payroll partnerships, sized against the FCA Financial Lives Survey 2024. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/open-banking-fraud-defence https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/open-banking-fraud-defence Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Open banking is genuinely defending against fraud, but only inside the use cases customers will consent to, and only as one layer in a wider stack. Why CoP and VoP are the quiet wins, why APP and mule networks are the unsolved problems, and why the banks that hold the source data have an obligation we should be talking about more. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/credit-union-transformation-roadshow-response https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/credit-union-transformation-roadshow-response Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Rachel Reeves has put political will, common-bond reform and £30m behind credit unions. Fair4All Finance's Transformation Programme roadshows prove the moment has arrived, but if transformation just means restructuring, the £30m will reorganise the problem rather than solve it. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/open-banking-only-scores https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/open-banking-only-scores Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Open banking is brilliant, but not in isolation. Why open-banking-only credit and affordability scores quietly mis-price risk, and what lenders should be combining to widen the funnel without widening losses. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/motor-finance-company-brain https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/motor-finance-company-brain Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The FCA's H2 2025 complaints data points to a strategic AI moment for regulated lenders. Why a company brain, built on quality data, will define the next era of motor finance. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/affordable-credit-arithmetic-fair4all-response https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/affordable-credit-arithmetic-fair4all-response Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Fair4All Finance has admitted the affordable credit gap isn't closing. Across 43 UK credit unions, £389m of member savings sat at high street banks while a £2bn unmet need persisted. Capital alone won't fix this, automation will. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/ai-aggregator-anthropic https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/ai-aggregator-anthropic Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Personal LLMs are about to eat consumer-finance discovery. The aggregator model is becoming plumbing; the broker is moving into the chat. Credit Canary is the platform that makes that real. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/positive-friction-lending-journeys https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/positive-friction-lending-journeys Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lending is the moment of maximum borrower intent, yet journeys routinely lose most applicants. A four-layer model for fixing the leak, with a live calculator to model the impact on your book. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/open-banking-completion-design-problem https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/open-banking-completion-design-problem Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The industry benchmark for open banking completion in UK lending journeys sits at 62%. Our worst month in the last year was 78.4%. Here's what 11 months of beating the benchmark taught us. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/data-should-be-hygiene-introducing-connect https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/data-should-be-hygiene-introducing-connect Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 We've noticed smaller lenders are paying too much for basic data searches. CONNECT gives lenders API access to credit, identity, and affordability data at a fraction of the cost. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/fsqs-certified-supplier-ready https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/fsqs-certified-supplier-ready Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Credit Canary is now fully FSQS registered, and has recertified for ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials. Three independent certifications that mean your procurement path is already paved. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/solar-demand-surging-who-will-finance-it https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/solar-demand-surging-who-will-finance-it Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The banks tried green lending and walked away. Energy companies won https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/ai-amplifier-not-foundation https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/ai-amplifier-not-foundation Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 AI rewards the prepared. Companies that built deep domain knowledge, structured data, and real customer understanding before the AI wave are the ones who https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/common-bond-reform https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/common-bond-reform Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Common bond reform is a positive step for UK credit unions, but scaling access to affordable credit means evolving how credit unions make decisions, what products they offer, and how they reach a wider audience. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/uk-financial-inclusion-strategy-credit-unions https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/uk-financial-inclusion-strategy-credit-unions Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 How UK credit unions can play a central role in the national financial inclusion strategy through technology and innovation. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/tactical-approaches-credit-unions-financial-inclusion https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/tactical-approaches-credit-unions-financial-inclusion Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Practical approaches credit unions can take today to advance financial inclusion using technology and community outreach. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/lessons-from-us-credit-unions https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/lessons-from-us-credit-unions Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Lessons UK credit unions can learn from their US counterparts on technology adoption, growth, and member engagement. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/credit-union-car-finance-partnership https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/credit-union-car-finance-partnership Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Credit unions and car finance: how partnerships can expand member services and drive financial inclusion. https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/building-future-financial-inclusion https://www.creditcanary.co.uk/resources/blog/building-future-financial-inclusion Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Building the future of financial inclusion, how technology, credit unions, and responsible lending create better outcomes.