Credit Where It's Due Starting a business in the financial sector comes with its unique hurdles, but for Nik Charalampous, it was all about building trust

Nik Charalampous, CEO of CredAbility, a Manchester based credit score and financial insights platform, is on a mission to make credit scores simple and accessible. CredAbility offers practical, jargon-free advice to help people improve their credit scores and access better financial products - a strategy that has turned the platform into a trusted resource. Since 2019, his platform has helped over 2 million users improve their credit health, but the journey to success was anything but easy. Entrepreneur UK Caught up with Charalampous to find out more.

What were the biggest challenges you faced when starting your business, and how did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges was building trust. When you launch a financial product, especially one that deals with credit scores, people are understandably cautious. There is a lot of noise in the market and plenty of scepticism. We knew we had to stand out by being genuinely helpful, jargon-free, and completely free to use. It took time, but by focusing on providing real value - like clear guidance, weekly credit updates, and practical tips to save money - we started to build a loyal community. Getting that trust early on made all the difference.

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How did you identify and seize opportunities in the early stages of your start-up?
We paid attention to the gaps others were missing. Most services felt complicated, intimidating, or only aimed at people who already had good credit. We knew credit scores were important to people and saw an opportunity to simplify things. We listened to what people needed beyond credit, offering practical money-saving advice and easy-to-read financial news with insights into how it affects normal people. That helped us shape CredAbility from a credit score tracker into a much broader financial health platform which helps people understand credit, improve it, and use it to access better products.

What do you wish you had known about the UK start-up ecosystem before you began?
I wish I had known that things can take longer than you think, even when you are moving quickly. Getting partnerships in place, building relationships with lenders, even small things like paperwork or compliance, all take time. In the early stages, you are full of energy, and you expect everything to move at the same pace. Learning to be patient with the process, while still pushing forward every day, was a big lesson.

Looking back, what is the one piece of advice you would give to founders just starting out in the UK's start-up scene?
Be clear about why you are doing it and the real problem you're solving. Building a start-up is not easy, and there will be times when it is tempting to change direction just to chase growth or because someone tells you to. Spend as much time as you can talking to your users, learning from them, and adjusting quickly. If you build something that genuinely improves people's lives, the rest - growth, investment, partnerships - becomes much easier. People can tell when a business is built with real purpose behind it.

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