Plaid launches Instant Link and LendScore 2 for permissioned cash-flow underwriting and next-generation credit-risk scoring

What changed

Plaid launched Instant Link and LendScore 2 on October 6. Instant Link lets consumers permission Plaid's Consumer Reporting Agency to provide cash-flow and network insights for future credit applications; Plaid says lenders can retrieve permissioned insights in under two seconds without requiring the borrower to reconnect a bank account each time. LendScore 2 expands into a family of credit-risk models including core Ls2, Auto, Short Term and Home Lending variants, plus the transformer-based LendScore Arc. Plaid reports that Ls2 delivers 42% greater predictive power than traditional credit data alone; these performance figures are Plaid's own evaluations.