Credit monitoring services continue to experience strong growth in terms of use among consumers. In November 2020, 47% of adults said they check their credit score at least once a year, compared to 31% in 2016. This growth is impressive, especially in a market like financial services where behaviours tend to be slow to change and adapt. Disruption and innovation have made checking credit scores easier and more convenient, and growing numbers are checking their credit score regularly.

COVID-19 has negatively affected the demand for credit and the third national lockdown in January 2021 will have brought a new wave of disruption to personal finances. However, this should drive higher engagement as consumers look for ways to assess the impact on their overall financial health and their medium- to long-term prospects.

Interest in the power and importance of personal data has also contributed to growth, with empowered consumers now demanding free credit monitoring services as standard. However, this threatens the viability of paid-for offerings, with a large majority (80%) of people agreeing that free services are good enough for their needs.

As frequent usage grows, applying for credit is no longer the top reason to check credit scores, with people now turning to these services as an indicator of overall financial wellbeing. Looking forward, technological developments such as Open Banking provide a perfect framework on which to extend the reach of credit monitoring services. From a more real-time approach and through a more holistic aggregation of financial data, credit monitoring services have the potential to expand into other consumer segments such as insurance or utilities.

• The impact of COVID-19 on the credit monitoring market.

• The frequency of checking credit scores among consumers, and how this has changed compared to 2016 and 2018.

• Awareness and use of main brands in the market.

• Reasons to check credit scores.

• Perceptions of different types of services such as free, paid-for or provided by banks or third parties.

• Consumer attitudes, including towards data security and the use of credit scores when comparing insurance or utility providers.

COVID-19: Market context

The first COVID-19 cases were confirmed in the UK at the end of January 2020, with a small number of cases in February. As the case level rose, the government ordered the closure of non-essential stores on 20 March. 

A wider lockdown requiring people to stay at home except for essential shopping, exercise and work ‘if absolutely necessary’ followed on 23 March. It wasn't until 15 June that non-essential stores were allowed to reopen, followed by pubs, restaurants, hotels and hairdressers on 4 July, and many beauty businesses on 13 July.

By September, it had become clear that the UK was at the start of a second wave, and social distancing measures were intensified. Continued increases in infection numbers led to Wales implementing a two-week national lockdown from 19 October, England announcing a month-long lockdown from 5 November and Scotland introducing a new five-level system of coronavirus restrictions. 

Despite these restrictions, however, case numbers continued to increase. All four UK nations tightened restrictions in January 2021, effectively leading to a full UK-wide lockdown. There is no defined end date for the lockdown, although the legislation regarding the English lockdown that was presented to Parliament extends to 31 March.

The UK’s vaccination programme started on 8 December 2020, and with both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines licensed for use in the UK, the government aims to offer a vaccine to 15 million people by mid-February.

Our core assumptions on the path of the pandemic had always included an expectation of severe disruption to markets and consumers’ lifestyles well into 2021, with a strong likelihood that the virus would still be with us even into 2022. Although the second wave of infections and subsequent lockdown puts us towards the negative end of our initial expectations, these developments are still broadly consistent with our previous assumptions.

Similarly, Mintel had factored in the likelihood that an effective vaccine would be available from early to mid-2021. The licensing of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Oxford-AstraZeneca and Moderna-NIAID vaccines puts us slightly ahead of that assumption, but the challenge associated with rolling out a new vaccination programme to millions of people means that our previous assumptions are still broadly consistent with the new reality.

Mintel’s economic assumptions are based on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s central scenario included in its November 2020 Fiscal Sustainability Report. The scenario suggests that UK GDP will have fallen by 11.3% in 2020, recovering by 5.5% in 2021 and 6.6% in 2022. GDP isn’t expected to return to pre-COVID levels until Q4 2022. The central scenario has unemployment peaking at 7.5% in Q2 2021.



The current uncertainty means that there is wide variation on the range of forecasts, however, and this is reflected in the OBR’s own scenarios. In its upside scenario, economic activity returns to pre-COVID-19 levels by Q4 2021. Its more negative scenario, by contrast, would mean that GDP doesn’t recover until Q3 2024.

The second wave of infections and subsequent lockdowns means that the short-term prospects for the country are consistent with the OBR’s negative scenario, but this needs to be balanced against the fact that the vaccine rollout is ahead of even the OBR’s central scenario. Medium to long term, then, we are still basing our forecasts and market analysis on the OBR’s central economic scenario.

For the purposes of this Report, the terms ‘credit scoring’ and ‘credit monitoring’ are used interchangeably to describe the services people use to access information about their credit score and credit history.

This Report focuses on consumer use of credit monitoring services, rather than B2B (Business-to-Business) services. It does not look at the role of credit reference agencies in detail but instead focuses on consumer-facing brands and providers.