Perseus 2026 / Brokers: better terms for your clients start with better data

Brokers: better terms for your clients start with better data

The problem

Your SME clients need finance, and the best terms on the market are increasingly tied to sustainability performance: preferential rates on green loans, sustainability-linked facilities, retrofit finance, and equipment or EV finance priced on verified outcomes. Getting to those terms is where the deal breaks. Lenders often ask for EPCs, energy bills, spreadsheets, self-declarations and consultant reports, and none of it gives them assurable data they can price against. This can take months, leading to low conversion, stalling, client’s losing patience, and the business goes back into standard lending because sustainable finance is too hard, too slow or just too difficult to compete.

The commercial backdrop makes this both worse and more valuable to fix: growth is below its historical average, invoices are paid late on top of already long terms, and energy has moved from a compliance topic to a visible line on the P&L. A proposition that cuts a client’s energy bill and their cost of capital at the same time sells itself on cost alone: what has been missing is data a lender can easily price against.

What Perseus enables

Perseus is a UK Smart Data Scheme. With the SME’s explicit permission, it helps move their half-hourly smart meter data directly to their lender (via their accounting platform), source-stamped and auditable, through the accounting and carbon platforms they already use. The SME grants permission once, in a platform they already know, and the data moves without anyone touching a spreadsheet.

The lender receives verified consumption data with an audit trail that is credible (stands up to greenwash critiques and regulatory scrutiny), which is what they need to offer their best rate.

Perseus is backed by Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest, Sage, Xero, Intuit and Smart DCC, it is named as a flagship in the UK Government’s Smart Data Strategy, and has been endorsed by the Net Zero Council. It is part of the infrastructure that makes sustainable finance workable at SME scale, and brokers are the route through which most SMEs will reach it. To be clear: Perseus has defined the rules of data sharing and the plumbing that enables the data to flow across the market (like Open Banking): it is not a big database and it enables app developers to make things for their own customers.

What this means for you

Faster deals, better terms. A client who can show verified energy performance qualifies for products that are currently hard to reach. As lenders compete for deals, underwriting can move faster with lower risk, and the offer your client gets should be priced on what their business actually does rather than on estimates.

Lower friction engagement. The value of good data sits upstream of the application: brokers who can walk a client through Perseus-enabled finance are bringing something to the table that is currently seen as hard. As Perseus rolls out across the major lenders and accounting platforms, brokers who move first can both shape how the system works for them, and become the advisors SMEs go to for sustainable finance.

A wider client base. Perseus can address the whole SME market, from sole traders to mid-sized businesses, and can unlock green loans, sustainability-linked lending, retrofit finance and equipment finance. If your client has a smart meter and needs capital, they are in scope today.

Visibility in a national programme. Brokers actively supporting client onboarding are participants in a scheme that some of the UK’s largest lenders are funding, with introductions and referrals flowing back through the community as it grows.

Perseus can put verified data behind the case you take to the lender.

How to get involved

IB1 convenes and governs Perseus as an independent non-profit. We do not collect your or your clients’ data. If you are a broker who wants to work with us, we can:

  • Walk you through how it works and how we are collaborating to find the first flagship use cases and case studies
  • Connect you to the Perseus-integrated carbon accounting platforms your clients can use
  • Add you to the network as an active supporter of the SME rollout

If your clients’ preferred lenders or accounting software providers are not yet Perseus-enabled, tell us which ones and we will approach them to get them engaged in the programme.

Get in touch at perseus@ib1.org.