The service, operating from Smart Data Foundry’s base at Edinburgh Futures Institute, will be part of a network of five other data services across the UK.

Led by Smart Data Foundry’s Dougie Robb and the University of Edinburgh’s Professor Chris Dibben, the financial data service will offer insights into the economic health of the UK through access to de-identified banking and finance data from households and businesses.

The service will partner with financial instutitions and research institutes to deliver evidence about financial behaviours, economic resilience and regional economic activity.

Established in 2022, Smart Data Foundry uses anonymised financial data to understand economic dynamics and inform research. The company’s work has included research with NatWest Group on how Covid-19 affected how people earned, spent and saved during and post pandemic.

Dougie Robb, interim chief executive at Smart Data Foundry, said: “We look forward to joining five of the most forward-thinking data service organisations in the UK in this groundbreaking network. It will foster data sharing partnerships between academia, public institutions and private enterprise leading to public good outcomes which will improve the lives of people across the UK.

“In partnership with the University of Edinburgh (UoE) we’ve made great progress in holding and making available for public benefit research financial data resources. We have forged fruitful data partnerships with NatWest Group, Virgin Money, SAGE, and Equifax, and built a team of transdisciplinary experts with expertise across finance, banking, digital technology, product, data science, and information governance.”

Professor Chris Dibben added: “Understanding the financial situation of households across the UK is a vitally important for social and economic research. However this key aspect of economic life is often poorly measured in our research datasets or even absent. This investment by Smart Data Research UK in a Financial Data Service will allow us to change this situation, enabling more public benefit social and economic policy research.”

Smart Data Research has also awarded funding to the Smart Energy Data Service, part of the Energy Systems Catapult. The two services join four announced in October 2024: imagery data service (Imago); smart data donation service; geographic data service and the healthy and sustainable places data service.

Stian Westlake, executive chair of the Economic and Social Research Council, said at the time: “This investment in a new network of smart data services helps put the UK at the forefront of data-driven innovation. Data infrastructure is as critical to our shared prosperity as transport, water or power networks.”