The UK’s completely free credit scoring service, ClearScore, today launches ‘Timeline’, a unique new tool giving people a ‘big picture’ view of their money.
Timeline charts the relationship between different aspects of a person’s finances, letting people see how and why their credit score has changed over time.
Work on the concept began 12 months ago and many months of development work and testing have gone into finessing the innovative feature. It marks an important step in ClearScore’s mission to help people get a clear view of their finances, and ultimately make better financial decisions.
Three interactive lines track an individual’s credit score, short term and long term debt. Clicking on different data lines or data points reveals more detail.
Having this information visualised in one place makes it easier for ClearScore users to interpret their credit data, see the most important information and take action. 1.8 million people now use ClearScore to regularly check their credit score, all of whom will automatically get access to this new feature the next time they log in, as part of the free-for-life service.
Justin Basini, ClearScore CEO and founder said, “By visualising the relationship between your credit score history, debt and overall financial situation, Timeline helps people plan for their financial future and make smarter choices. We’ve taken data that can seem abstract and made it much easier to understand, so people can take back control.”
Alongside the launch of Timeline, ClearScore is also introducing ‘Learn’. This new section of the site features helpful tools, articles and quick videos which explain how to build your credit score and become financially confident."
These features are well timed, as feedback from ClearScore’s community found 76% of them want to improve their score. Only half (52%) of people surveyed were able to name one way to go about improving their score, highlighting a big gap in people’s understanding. There is an urgent need for well designed financial education as recent findings show 34% of people don’t know what APR stands for and yet reliance on credit in the UK continues to grow.