Creditspring, the London-based subscription credit provider, has secured FCA permission to operate as a credit broker, allowing it to refer eligible members to carefully selected third-party lenders when its own products are not the most suitable option. The announcement was made on 13 August 2026.
The new permission shifts Creditspring’s model from a single-product lender into something closer to a guided credit marketplace, at least for the members it cannot directly serve. The company said the change means that where a Creditspring product falls short on suitability, customers can be directed to alternative providers without leaving the Creditspring relationship entirely.
Neil Kadagathur, chief executive and founder of Creditspring, said: “Until now, if one of our products wasn’t the right fit, our ability to help was limited. With this new permission, we can continue supporting eligible members by introducing them to carefully selected alternative providers where appropriate.”
Regulatory fit
The FCA’s Consumer Duty framework, which came into full force in July 2023 for open products and services, requires firms to demonstrate that their products deliver good outcomes and are genuinely suited to the consumers who hold them. A lender that can only offer its own products faces a structural tension under that duty: suitability ends where the product range ends. By adding a credit broking permission, Creditspring has a formal mechanism to fulfil a suitability obligation even when the answer is a competitor’s product. That alignment with Consumer Duty is not merely rhetorical; it has operational weight in how the FCA assesses conduct risk.
The timing also matters. Buy now, pay later lending in the UK was brought into the regulatory perimeter last month following years of deferred legislation, bringing a swathe of short-term credit products under FCA oversight for the first time. That shift increases the total volume of regulated credit products available in the broker market and widens the pool of lenders Creditspring could, in principle, refer to.
Market context
Creditspring launched in 2016 with a subscription model that charges members a fixed annual fee in exchange for access to two interest-free loans per year, with the fee functioning as the cost of credit in place of an interest rate. The company says it has since provided more than £1 billion in credit across more than two million loans, serving over one million customers.
The subscription credit model occupies a distinct segment within consumer lending, sitting between traditional instalment products and the higher-cost short-term lending it was designed to replace. Adding credit broking extends the addressable market without requiring Creditspring to launch new balance-sheet products. The risk is reputational: broking revenue is typically commission-based, and Consumer Duty requires that any commercial arrangement does not distort the suitability assessment. The FCA will expect Creditspring to demonstrate that referrals are made on the basis of customer fit rather than panel economics.
The company said the broking permission forms part of a broader strategy to develop a financial wellbeing proposition, though it did not disclose target referral volumes, the identity of third-party lenders already on its panel, or any financial projections tied to the new activity.
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