Company type | Privately held company |
---|---|
Industry | Personal finance, software, financial technology |
Founded | July 1, 2015 |
Founder |
|
Headquarters | , |
Key people | Justin Basini (CEO and Co-founder)| |
Products |
|
Revenue | £100 million (2022) |
Owners | QED Investors, Lead Edge Capital and Invus Opportunities. |
Number of employees | 450 [1] (2024) |
Website | www |
ClearScore is a British financial technology business that provides credit scores, reports and affordability scores for individuals at no cost to its users. |t also provides a marketplace in which people source credit cards, loans and car finance. ClearScore earns commission from the financial services providers to which it refers individual clients that have used its services.
It was founded in July 2015, by Justin Basini (b. June 1974), Nigel Morris and Dan Cobley (b. June 1967). [2] [3] It claims that it was the first company in the United Kingdom to provide free credit scores and credit report.[ citation needed ] ClearScore then expanded to include increased visibility of affordability, using current account spending patterns via Open Banking. As of 2024 [update] , the company had over 20m users [4] and operates in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada.
ClearScore has partnerships with over 150 financial institutions around the world.
ClearScore launched on 15 July 2015. It was the UK's first service giving consumers access to their credit score and report. [5] Its initial offering provided credit scores and reports, and in July 2015 the company added credit card offers to its site, and in September 2015 it added personal loan offers. In December 2015 it launched the UK’s first credit checking app. [6]
In July 2016 the company added a credit history feature called Timeline [7] to its site. [8] In November 2016 it added car finance offers, and in February 2017 launched a chatbot to help users improve their credit. [9]
The company launched in South Africa in June 2017, India in August 2018, Australia in February 2020 and Canada in September 2022. [10] ClearScore India closed in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
In September 2018, the Advertising Standards Authority received 35 complaints that a ClearScore TV advert aired in June "trivialised" domestic violence. The ad was cleared by the ASA. [11] [12]
In March 2018, Experian announced plans to acquire ClearScore for £275 million ($366 million). The acquisition was abandoned in February 2019 after the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) indicated that they considered that the acquisition would reduce competition in the UK market. [13]
In April 2020 it launched a Dark Web Monitoring service called ClearScore Protect. [14]
In 2021 the ClearScore Group launched a second app using telematics technology to give drivers data on their driving performance so that they can save money on car insurance if they choose to share the data. [15]
In 2022, the ClearScore Group acquired Money Dashboard, a provider of open banking technology and opened a secondary UK technology and data science hub in Edinburgh. [16]
In 2023, the ClearScore Group announced a partnership with illion in Australia. As part of the partnership, illion will be retiring its Credit Simple consumer proposition and Credit Simple users will be able to continue to access their credit scores and reports through the ClearScore app. [17]
ClearScore provides credit scores and credit reports from credit bureaus Equifax (in the UK) and Experian (in South Africa and Australia). Most of ClearScore’s services are free to consumers. [18]
ClearScore Protect provides dark web monitoring for users.[ citation needed ]
ClearScore offers an ‘Affordability Score’, characterized as guidance as to what a user can afford to borrow.[ citation needed ]
A chatbot is a software application or web interface that is designed to mimic human conversation through text or voice interactions. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of maintaining a conversation with a user in natural language and simulating the way a human would behave as a conversational partner. Such chatbots often use deep learning and natural language processing, but simpler chatbots have existed for decades.
A credit score is a number that provides a comparative estimate of an individual's creditworthiness based on an analysis of their credit report. It is an inexpensive and main alternative to other forms of consumer loan underwriting.
Opera Limited is a multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Oslo, Norway with additional offices in Europe, China, and Africa. Opera offers a range of products and services that include a variety of PC and mobile web browsers, GameMaker and gaming portals, the Opera News content recommendation products, the Opera Ads platform, and a number of Web3 and e-commerce products and services. The company's total user base is 311 million monthly active users.
Experian is a multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Experian collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more than 25 million U.S. businesses. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Experian is a partner in USPS address validation. It is one of the "Big Three" credit-reporting agencies, alongside TransUnion and Equifax.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq., is federal legislation enacted to promote the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of consumer information contained in the files of consumer reporting agencies. It was intended to shield consumers from the willful and/or negligent inclusion of erroneous data in their credit reports. To that end, the FCRA regulates the collection, dissemination, and use of consumer information, including consumer credit information. Together with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the FCRA forms the foundation of consumer rights law in the United States. It was originally passed in 1970, and is enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and private litigants.
TransUnion is an American consumer credit reporting agency. TransUnion collects and aggregates information on over one billion individual consumers in over thirty countries including "200 million files profiling nearly every credit-active consumer in the United States". Its customers include over 65,000 businesses. Based in Chicago, Illinois, TransUnion's 2014 revenue was US$1.3 billion. It is the smallest of the three largest credit agencies, along with Experian and Equifax.
Equifax Inc. is an American multinational consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and is one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies, along with Experian and TransUnion. Equifax collects and aggregates information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide. In addition to credit and demographic data and services to business, Equifax sells credit monitoring and fraud prevention services directly to consumers.
An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot, is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) on the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet bot plays the client role in a client–server model whereas the server role is usually played by web servers. Internet bots are able to perform simple and repetitive tasks much faster than a person could ever do. The most extensive use of bots is for web crawling, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers. More than half of all web traffic is generated by bots.
A credit bureau is a data collection agency that gathers account information from various creditors and provides that information to a consumer reporting agency in the United States, a credit reference agency in the United Kingdom, a credit reporting body in Australia, a credit information company (CIC) in India, a Special Accessing Entity in the Philippines, and also to private lenders. It is not the same as a credit rating agency.
A credit score is a numerical expression based on a level analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of an individual. A credit score is primarily based on a credit report, information typically sourced from credit bureaus.
AnnualCreditReport.com is a website jointly operated by the three major U.S. credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. The site was created in order to comply with their obligations under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) to provide a mechanism for American consumers to receive up to three free credit reports per year.
192.com is a British company that publishes an online directory as well as information contained within the public domain for the United Kingdom, based in London, England.
Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007. It has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitoring of unclaimed property databases and a tool to identify and dispute credit report errors. The company operates in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Noddle was a credit report service offered by the British arm of American company TransUnion. The business was launched in 2011 and was sold to Credit Karma in 2019.
Money Dashboard is a free online personal financial management service in the United Kingdom. It provides users with the ability to view all of their online financial accounts in one place and categorises and analyses all of their transactions so they can understand how they use money. The app aims to help consumers make better financial decisions and budget for the future.
Revolut is a global neobank and financial technology company with headquarters in London, UK that offers banking services for retail customers and businesses. It was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. It offers products including banking services, currency exchange, debit and credit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing "vaults", personal loans and BNPL, stock trading, crypto, commodities, human resources and other services.
Babylon Health was a digital-first health service provider that combined an artificial intelligence-powered platform with virtual clinical operations for patients. Patients are connected with health care professionals through their web and mobile application.
DoNotPay is an online legal service and chatbot. The product provides a "robot lawyer" service that claims to make use of artificial intelligence to contest parking tickets and provide various other legal services, with a subscription cost of $36 bimonthly. DoNotPay's effectiveness and marketing have been subject to praise and criticism.
Haptik is an Indian enterprise conversational AI platform founded in August 2013, and acquired by Reliance Industries Limited in 2019. The company develops technology to enable enterprises to build conversational AI systems that allow users to converse with applications and electronic devices in free-format, natural language, using speech or text. The company has been accorded numerous accolades including the Frost & Sullivan Award, NASSCOM's Al Game Changer Award, and serves Fortune 500 brands globally in industries such as financial, insurance, healthcare, technology and communications.
Zilch Technology Ltd., known as Zilch, is a direct-to-consumer ad-subsidised payments network. Headquartered in London, Zilch combines payments and advertising to offer customers flexible payment solutions for online and in-store transactions, with the vision "to eliminate the cost of consumer credit. For good".
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