Experian & DWP

steamship

DWP now use Experian for data matching. What info is added (if any) to an individuals credit report? (e.g.new address/search footprint).

Does Experian keep a separate database of addresses of benefit claimants?

Does Experian offer services to enable a lender to check whether there are DWP claimants living at a given address? I also mean services beyond a standard credit check of an individual e.g. an address check with no named person.

As an analogy, Experian offer councils a service where they can inform the number of occupiers for council tax but it is not a credit check.

Can a lender query an address and have Experian say yes or no or how many benefit claimants live there and give details of what they are claiming?

Thanks

CIS

As an analogy, Experian offer councils a service where they can inform the number of occupiers for council tax but it is not a credit check.

They just check the available databases to see if there's more than one person using an address that has a single person discount, there's nothing too complicated about what they do.

steamship

Thanks for the reply. I was only giving that as an example of a non credit service provided by experian.

What I really want to know is whether a lender/bank,etc can check whether a person or a property has a benefit claim associated with it?

Perhaps the Experian expert will know?

cifpower

steamship wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I was only giving that as an example of a non credit service provided by experian.

What I really want to know is whether a lender/bank,etc can check whether a person or a property has a benefit claim associated with it?

Perhaps the Experian expert will know?

HMRC and DWP can see the credit files but they leave no footprint so lenders cannot see they have looked.

CIS

What I really want to know is whether a lender/bank,etc can check whether a person or a property has a benefit claim associated with it?

Benefit claims aren't lodged on credit reports and they aren't passed to 3rd parties as a matter of course so there should be no external database for searching.

Malmo

Data matching would not involve the DWP (or any other part of the Government) giving 3rd parties access to it's databases. A typical process involves the client sending encrypted PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data to the 3rd party, perhaps on a quarterly basis. The 3rd party will then match against their own datasets and modelled views of UK adults to highlight exceptions based on discrepancies that merit further investigation by the client. Exceptions are generally given a "confidence" level to indicate the degree to which that exception meets the matching criteria & rules.

Based on the returned matches, the DWP could investigate high confidence cases of fraud involving living together (actual demographic data), undeclared income & earnings (modelled data), undeclared assets (modelled data) and other attributes that the 3rd party has actual data for or has modelled themselves.