ClearScore is a British financial technology business that provides

credit scores 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 bu ...

, reports and

current account Current account or Current Account may refer to: * Current account (balance of payments), a country's balance of trade, net of factor income and cash transfers * Current account (banking) A transaction account, also called a checking account, ch ...

spending analysis for individuals at no cost to its subscribers, it earns commission from the financial companies 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 Nigel William Morris (born June 1958) is a British businessman. He is the managing partner of QED Investors and co-founded Capital One Financial Services with Richard Fairbank. Early life Nigel William Morris was born in Billericay, Essex, t ...

and Dan Cobley (b. June 1967). It claims that it was the first company in the United Kingdom to provide free credit scores and credit report. ClearScore then expanded to include increased visibility of affordability, using current account spending patterns via Open Banking. , the company had over 17m users and operates in the United Kingdom,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, South Africa and Canada. ClearScore earns revenue from financial institutions, who pay ClearScore when acquiring new customers through the service. The Group has agreements with over 150 financial institutions around the world.

History

ClearScore launched on 15 July 2015. It was the UK's first service giving consumers access to their

credit score 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 bu ...

and report. 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. In July 2016 the company added a credit history feature called Timeline to its site. In November 2016 it added car finance offers, and in February 2017 launched a chatbot to help users improve their credit. In April 2020, the firm launched the dark web monitoring service ClearScore Protect. The company launched in South Africa in June 2017, India in August 2018, Australia in February 2020 and Canada in September 2022. 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 Domestic violence (also known as domestic abuse or family violence) is violence or other abuse that occurs in a domestic setting, such as in a marriage or cohabitation. ''Domestic violence'' is often used as a synonym for ''intimate partner ...

. The ad was cleared by the ASA. In March 2018,

Experian Experian is an American–Irish multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company. Experian collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more t ...

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. In 2020 it launched a Dark Web Monitoring service called ClearScore Protect. In 2021 the ClearScore Group launched a second app, calle
DriveScore
using cutting edge 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. In 2022, the ClearScore Group acquired Money Dashboard, a leading provider of open banking technology and opened a secondary UK technology and data science hub in Edinburgh. In 2023, the ClearScore Group announced a partnership with

illion , is a Japanese singer, songwriter, musician, record producer and actor. Noda is the lead vocalist, songwriter and guitarist of the Japanese rock band Radwimps and also began a solo project, Illion, in 2012. Life and career Early life, Radwi ...

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.

Products and services

ClearScore provides

s and credit reports from

credit bureau 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 repor ...

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 (together known as the "Big Thr ...

(in the UK) and

(in South Africa and Australia). Most of ClearScore’s services are free to consumers. ClearScore Protect provides

dark web The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on ''darknets'': overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communi ...

monitoring for users. ClearScore offers an ‘Affordability Score’, characterized as guidance as to what a user can afford to borrow.

References

{{reflist Credit scoring