Profile: Justin Basini, CEO of London fintech making IPO plans
- ByStartupStory | February 23, 2026
On the homepage of The Times website this week, nestled between a review of the new Wuthering Heights film and a comment piece about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s ex-wife, was a story about how a podcaster and novelist “broke the internet” with an Instagram poll about what coffee table she and her partner should buy.
Thousands commented on Elizabeth Day’s domestic dilemma, on whether the couple should opt for a coffee table such as Dunelm’s simple kidney-shaped coffee table in black-stained mango wood or Soho Home’s striking circular reddish-orange Rosso Alicante marble table.
Professional interior designers, the comedian Miranda Hart, and TV actress Scarlet Moffatt, were amongst Day’s 360,000 followers who eagerly had their say.
One of those not commenting was Day’s husband, Justin Basini, a startup entrepreneur and CEO of a UK fintech that is a prime candidate to soon IPO.
“We have now chosen the table, and we have released that to the world,” laughs Basini, the co-founder and CEO of credit marketplace ClearScore, speaking at its light and airy south London offices.
“And apparently, that is very interesting to people. Surprising to me.”
Accidental Insta celeb
In fact, at the behest of his wife, Basini, who is not a big social media user due to health concerns, has become something of an unwitting Insta celebrity, appearing in his wife’s Insta videos as an amateur chef.
He says: “This cooking thing has gone mad. I feel like the work that I do is important. The impact I have on our 26 million users is important, the 600 staff that I employ is important. And almost always now I will walk into meetings, and people will be like ‘saw you cooking pasta on Sunday’ and that is the thing they engage in.”
Basini, 51, Italian ancestry, strong bearing, a full head of hair atop pronounced features, has the look of a chef, albeit one who is serving up a public offering, rather than a culinary offering.
Laying the groundwork for IPO
ClearScore, one of London’s most prominent fintechs, is currently laying the foundations for an IPO- and London is the favoured destination.
The 2015-founded startup is working with an undisclosed accountancy firm to audit its systems- be it legal, finance, reporting structures- to see if it’s IPO-ready, Basini says.
Basini said: “As I see it now, given the size of the company, the profile of the brand, the investor base, our mix of growth and profitability, that London is the lead option.”
Incentives like the UK chancellor’s stamp duty holidays for companies that list on the London Stock Exchange are also helpful, he says.
A London listing, which could value ClearScore at between £1.5bn and £2.5bn, according to industry estimates, would be welcomed by investors, staff, and the UK government wanting to defrost an ice-cold IPO market.
But a ClearScore listing is not going to happen overnight, Basini says, and points out that he wants the company to grow bigger before it takes the plunge.
If London is the lead option, then the US, it would seem, is an unlikely option, courtesy of its lack of US brand recognition (ClearScore is not in the US), allied to it being too small to quicken the pulse of US investors and be a success.
Basini says: “If a company were to IPO for £5bn in the UK, I think they would be FTSE 100. In the US, they would be the bottom 25 per cent.”
IPO good for general public
Another option out the door is ClearScore making its way through the alphabet in never-ending private funding rounds, shielding itself from the glare of quarterly reporting of public life.
Speaking in a personal capacity, Basini has a public-spirited, opinionated view on companies staying private for too long.
He argues ClearScore (or any company, for that matter) is carrying out a wider public good by listing, arguing these days there is too much capital held in private companies, stoking public distrust and animosity towards “fat cat companies” who are “mugging off” the public.
Selling shares to the wider public following an IPO will help re-establish trust between companies and the public, which has been lost, he says.
Basini says: “My dad was a teacher, ex-coal miner, he never owned shares, and when Thatcher said you can own a bit of British Gas, you can own a bit of British Telecom, he bought a few shares. And what that is doing is enfranchising him and my family into that business growth. Largely, we have lost that, and that is because a lot of companies are staying private and they are owned by the top 0.1 per cent of the world.”
Luckily, all the ClearScore equity is not locked away and long-serving ClearScore staff are given the chance to cash in on their service, via small annual secondary share sales.
Basini says: “I am very conscious that I have people who joined me in their twenties, they are now in their thirties, they’re having babies, they want to pay down a bit of the mortgage.”
What does ClearScore do?
ClearScore is a credit marketplace, which has evolved from its credit score roots, to now offer its users an array of credit products: credit cards, loans, car finance and soon-to-launch mortgages.
It was founded by Basini, Nigel Morris, managing partner, QED Investors, who founded Capital One and is now ClearScore chairman, and Dan Cobley, ex-Google, who now acts as an advisor to Basini.
It operates in the UK, where it has 16 million users, with its headquarters in London and offices in Manchester and Edinburgh.
It also has a presence in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. New markets could be South America, mainland Europe and Asia.
Some commentators say that ClearScore might have peaked. Not so, says Basini, pointing out that it adds around two million customers a year, including one million UK users a year.
Taking on giants
ClearScore has disrupted a market, occupied by giants like TransUnion and Experian, with what it says is a more user-friendly and cheaper offering.
For example, Basini says that, unlike rivals, users get their credit score, credit report, and tools to understand it, for free. The wizardry of its algorithm and banking API links is another winning selling point, he says.
This means customers are only served up credit products which fit their financial budgets, eliminating the “doom loop” of users getting turned down for credit, impairing their credit rating. ClearScore is also available on third-party websites, such as GoCompare.
He also says that the credit scores of the active users of ClearScore increase by an average of 80 points, helping them access more interest-friendly products.
ClearScore, which also uses open banking technology, is free to consumers and makes money by taking a “bounty”, a commission from the financial institutions when a product is sold.
The fintech, which has raised over $200m in debt and equity and is backed by QED, Lead Edge Capital, and Blenheim Chalcot, was last publicly valued at $700m in 2021.
New credit products and financials
Buy Now Pay Later could be the next credit product it offers, which could come through acquisitions, following the three it has made to date.
He says: “Over the next 10 years, we want to broker every type of credit that is out there. We will start to think about Buy Now Pay Later. We will start to think about equity release. We will start to think about insurance that goes alongside credit products.”
ClearScore itself got close to being acquired by Experian in 2018, but was ruled out by the Competition and Markets Authority (where Basini now sits on the board), due to competition concerns- a deal, which had it been successful, would have given Basini all the coffee tables in the world!
However, what ClearScore won’t start to think about is investment and savings products.
Basini adds: “My users, they really are average families. I have got people who are not affluent, I have got people who are affluent. But if I look at the average, they are heavy users of credit, they are responsible borrowers. But they don’t have a huge amount of assets. They are not investing in the stock market.”
Financial figures for ClearScore UK in the year ending 2024 show revenues of £89.7m and pre-tax profits of £17.9m. However, these figures are only for its UK entity, with Basini saying it invests profits from its UK entity into its global business.
Integrating Buddhism
Basini’s professional career has run through peaks and valleys. ClearScore is his third startup, having had one failure (in his twenties), where he admits he made mistakes, and one moderate success (a data brokerage firm which he sold).
In between the two startups, Basini, who is chair of the financial education charity, the Money Charity, blagged his way into Deutsche Bank, pretending to be an investment banker, made some money, paid back his credit card debts from his failed startup, then learnt about consumer credit at Capital One.
In his twenties, he went through a rough spell, having suicidal thoughts, ending up in therapy, following the failure of his first startup.
He returned to therapy around ten years ago, going through a divorce and following his father’s death. A leveller has been Zen Buddhism, helping him achieve Zen-like calm, handle pressure and be attuned to the feelings of others, he says.
He says: “I meditate quite frequently. I spend time trying to integrate Buddhist practices into the way I think and feel about things.”
Despite his inner calm, he admits he can be a “quite emotional” leader who cries easily. “When did I last tear up?” he asks his top PR man, sitting next to us.
It was at the ClearScore summer party last year. Why? I ask.
He says: “Just because talking about the people we employ. We have a lot of people here who have been with us for eight, nine years. And came as first job people. They have grown, they have delivered a lot to the company.”
He admits he is a workaholic, firing off company Slack and email messages at 2am.
AI, London as fintech hub, and plans for 2026
Some commentators believe that AI could have a detrimental impact on ClearScore, superseding its offering. But Basini says it is embracing the tech, pointing to its positive impact.
He says: “I think it is going to be fantastic for businesses like us, which are tech-enabled, have a data asset that is unique, and have a brand.”
It is leveraging AI into its product, using it internally to streamline code, and latterly investing in agentic AI.
Meanwhile, the entrepreneur is a fan of London as a fintech hub, amid suggestions London has lost its European pre-eminence.
He says: “London is still a fantastic place to build a business. It is packed full of entrepreneurs, packed full of talent, huge infrastructure, huge access to government, regulator and the City.”
And ClearScore’s plans for the rest of the year?
He says: “Execute our plan, integrate Acre (its latest acquisition), focus a lot on some of the stuff we are doing in agentic AI and mortgages, and that is what we will be launching later this year.”
And which coffee table did the couple opt for? It was West Elm’s marble top perched atop a dark bronze base.
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