And so when we compare it against consumers that don't monitor their credit, we do see materially higher score improvements for those credit monitoring consumers, relative to the others, and does the active credit monitoring actually result in your score improving now there's nothing about looking at your credit score that causes your score to improve, it's not like every time I hit refresh my score ticks up.

But it's the same idea with joining a gym or a health club, the act of joining the health club doesn't cause you to improve, you actually have to show up and do the work, lift the weights and stretch and do the sweat stuff.

I think you're absolutely right that credit scores in the US are better understood. We're told that Americans ask lenders 'my score is 750, what can you offer me?' and they discussed it openly with friends over dinner - it hasn't quite penetrated the consumer psyche in the same way here, but what's been really positive to see recently, though, is there's definitely a growing awareness of the importance of regularly monitoring your credit information.

And that's been particularly evident through the pandemic TransUnion has been conducting a consumer pulse study to track the impacts of the pandemic on consumer finances, and we found at the end of 2021 that almost half of UK consumers are now monitoring their credit score at least monthly. And that's up from a third at the start of May 2020. Downside is our data has also shown that a quarter of people have never checked it, which is worrying given the important role that this information plays in helping people get access to finance and protecting their identity.