Hey everyone! 
We’re Kiran (@Harkiranjot, product designer) and Ed (product manager), and we’ve written a blog post to tell you a little more about the process of building and iterating on credit insights. We hope to give you a peek behind the curtain about how we use research to build products that meet customer needs, both at the start of the product design process and on an ongoing basis.
We’d love to answer any questions you have on this blog or credit insights more generally!
I love the feature and really interesting to see how you have progressed and refined it over time. Any plans for historical trends maybe in graph 
form?
- should have more to show in the next couple of weeks. It’s been a gap for too long!
Am I right that it’s still the case that in this country no actual lender cares about the numbers that the CRAs make up? That is, actual financial providers look at the file, not the “score” ?
They can’t see the score.
Indeed. Educating people that the score is there to upsell you stuff would be more beneficial.
Lenders don’t, but my friend works in lettings and he said they see the scores while referencing, which was baffling.
Not sure they use it for anything, as the credit agency would rate it poor, good or excellent kinda thing.
Most lenders will care about more than just a single score. But it’s not true to say they don’t see a score - each credit reference agency provides a score to lenders. It’s not always an exact match for the score you see as a consumer. Some lenders may ignore it entirely, or it may be used as an input among many others to their own model. I’d be surprised if any lenders base their decision solely or even primarily on the bureau score.
That said, the two are highly correlated. If you miss a payment on your credit card, most (all?) lenders’ models will penalise you, so you’ll either no longer be eligible with them or you might be offered a higher rate to reflect the increased risk you won’t pay them back. Your credit score will also go down. That’s why we used the “BMI” metaphor - it doesn’t tell the whole story by any means, but it can be a useful indicator.
Interesting read. The credit score functionality is pretty useful, but since you only show the score from the 3 agencies, only show the actual report from Transunion, it’s feels kinda misleading in my opinion.
If you could pull in the full data from all 3 (even if it’s once a month) that would be HUGE. The only other place you can get all 4 (including Crediva) in one place is CheckMyFile but they charge £17 a month (which does allow daily refresh).
Experian blocked third party access to all, last year.
Not quite “all”, CheckMyFile still pulls through Experian.
CheckMyFile costs though, so I should have said FREE third party access 
True, but Monzo Credit Insights isn’t technically “FREE” either 