Brighton lender Salad formally receives its King's Award for Enterprise

Salad³, a consumer lender based in Brighton since 2021, formally received its King’s Award for Enterprise on Friday 9 October, at a ceremony with Andrew Blackman, the Lord-Lieutenant of East Sussex.

The award is for innovation, and specifically for the way Salad decides who can borrow. Instead of a credit score, it uses Open Banking to read an applicant’s bank transactions, and a system of its own called Crouton judges whether they can afford the loan. Responsible Finance², a body Salad belongs to, said Salad appears to be the first consumer lender ever to win one of the awards.

Salad is a community development finance institution, and the largest in the UK that makes personal loans. It says it has now lent to more than 200,000 people. In 2025 most of its borrowers were in steady work earning up to £36,000 a year, and the average loan was £948. Salad says those borrowers saved £497 each in interest on average, set against the costlier lenders they would otherwise have used.

“We started Salad because too many people were being turned away by a financial system that didn’t understand them and wasn’t giving them a fair chance,” said Alan Campbell, who founded the business.

Craig Pennington, Salad’s chief executive, said applications from Brighton had risen over the past year. The company employs more than 50 people.