Fronted: against COVID-19 ^Company

Entity: Fronted

Category: FinTech and Digital Economy

Description: Fronted is a new London based startup aiming to make life easier for renters, is breaking cover today. Fronted pay your deposit upfront, you pay us back in bite-sized chunks.

Project: Covid Credit.

Summary: The Covid Credit team are trying to help UK freelancers claim money from the government. It includes Fronted, a rental services fintech, along with consultancy 11:FS and credit platform Credit Kudos. In this way, Fronted, 11:FS and Credit Kudos create ‘Covid Credit’ for help self-employed people. Covid Credit is a proof of concept helping self-employed workers demonstrate loss of income from COVID-19 to HMRC. In 48 hours a team from the UK Fintech community got together and built a working proof of concept. It allows a sole trader in the UK to self-certify that they have lost income and prove their previous 12 months of income by connecting to their bank account. This is possible due to the unique capabilities in the UK banking system called "open banking". Recent transaction history provides proof that income has been affected recently and by the crisis. Whilst the proof of concept is not publicly available, it works, and by creating something that works the hope is to demonstrate that this service could help the 5 million self employed through the COVID-19 crisis. Covid Credit team urge the UK Government to collaborate with they, the Fintech community, to help solve the rapidly evolving problem facing the UK self employed community. This service is ready to go live, but they are waiting on input and support from the UK Government before do it. Sole traders could use Covid Credit’s proof of concept to generate a self-certification of income loss to send to HMRC.