Prodigy Student Financing
Authors: Michèle Manpreet Ryatt and Georgia Thorne
Prodigy Finance is a United Kingdom (UK) based FinTech that provides loans to international postgraduate students based upon their predicted future income rather than their credit history. Initially designed to fund business degrees, Prodigy Finance loans have expanded to cover programmes of science, technology, engineering, law, public affairs, mathematics, and healthcare sciences. It enables students of disadvantaged socioeconomic background to access loans and has, to date, financed more than 22,500 students from across the world, 80% of whom come from low- and middle-income countries (Prodigy Finance, 2021b).
Prodigy Finance relies upon a proprietary credit model that assesses applicants based on projected earnings and university acceptance in addition to other data points. Therefore, it does not follow a traditional practice of screening applicants based on their credit history but rather focuses on students future earning potential (Fuscaldo, 2018).