Marshmallow Insurance has signed a multi-year data partnership with analytics specialist Percayso Inform and credit reference agency TransUnion, bringing together credit bureau intelligence and behaviour-based risk segmentation under a single integration layer. The three-way arrangement was agreed on an undisclosed commercial basis and runs initially for three years on Marshmallow’s side, with Percayso and TransUnion themselves contracting on a four-year initial term.
The deal extends an existing relationship: Marshmallow already licensed vehicle data from Percayso, and that agreement has now been renewed for a further three years. The new element is the delivery of TransUnion’s TrueVision credit solution through the Percayso platform, enabling Marshmallow to access credit, identity and affordability data without building a direct integration with the bureau itself.
What the data layer does
In practical terms, the Percayso platform acts as an orchestration layer, aggregating third-party data sources so that Marshmallow can call a single API rather than manage multiple bureau and enrichment feeds independently. For Marshmallow, the output covers risk assessment at point of quote, at renewal and at the claims stage for its insurance book, and credit suitability and affordability checks for its auto-finance product. The combined signals are intended to improve underwriting precision and support responsible lending decisions.
Mark Shields, head of partnerships at Marshmallow Insurance, said the adoption of credit data alongside Percayso’s own insights “will allow Marshmallow to provide more accessible and affordable financial products”, a framing consistent with the insurtech’s founding mission of serving customers who are poorly priced or declined by standard models, including newer UK residents whose international driving history is not captured in domestic datasets.
Market context and regulatory read-across
Marshmallow sits in an increasingly contested segment of the UK insurtech market. Several challenger insurers and data-driven MGAs are competing on better risk segmentation for non-standard customers, and the differentiation increasingly depends on the breadth and freshness of the data estate rather than the underwriting model alone. Data orchestration platforms, which abstract the complexity of managing multiple credit and enrichment feeds, have become a meaningful category in their own right as insurers seek to reduce integration overhead.
The partnership is also the first joint client win for Percayso and TransUnion as co-vendors, and the release signals their intention to expand the arrangement across UK insurance markets through 2026. That suggests a broader distribution strategy rather than a bespoke client build.
From a regulatory standpoint, the use of credit bureau data in insurance pricing and auto-finance lending sits under the FCA’s consumer duty requirements, which came into full force in 2023 and demand that firms demonstrate fair value and suitability outcomes rather than simply compliance with product rules. Any expansion of the auto-finance offering will also carry oversight from the ongoing FCA review into motor finance commission arrangements, a sector-wide examination that has already prompted significant provisioning from lenders. Marshmallow’s stated focus on accessible and affordable products for under-served consumers aligns with the direction of travel in the consumer duty framework, though the company will need to show that enriched data is producing genuinely better outcomes rather than simply more granular pricing.
The next milestones to watch are the scale of the Percayso-TransUnion rollout to further insurance clients in the second half of 2026 and any disclosure from Marshmallow on the impact of the new data layer on its loss ratios or auto-finance approval rates.