Economic Wellbeing Explorer Across Great Britain

With the launch of the Economic Wellbeing Explorer into England and Wales, we are focusing this month’s Economic Wellbeing Explorer update on some of the insights you can gather across Great Britain in the Explorer. Smart Data Foundry’s Economic Wellbeing Explorer is an interactive map-based tool that uses de-identified financial data to help to explore trends and themes in economic wellbeing at a national, regional and local level. 

Differences across the three nations

Welsh people in the sample had the highest rate of low emergency resilience, with 38% of account holders having less than £100 in their bank accounts on two or more occasions in a single month. Scotland had the lowest rate of this with 34.5% of account holders having low emergency resilience.

People living beyond their means is highest in England, with 12.6% of people spending 120% of income in the previous 5 weeks. This was lowest in Wales at 11.7% where account holders had a 0.4% decrease in living beyond their means.

Overall Scottish people had the lowest percentage of overdrawn accounts, sitting at 15.9% with a month on month decrease of 0.2%, while Welsh account holders have the highest percentage at 18.1%, though also have had a month on month decrease, from 18.2%.

This nationwide comparison helps us to visualise trends that are occurring across Great Britain, and to see where there are regional specific changes. For example, both Scotland and Wales had a slight decrease in account holders having low emergency resilience, while England had a slight increase. 

And whilst Wales has the highest rate of low emergency resilience at 38%, at a lower regional level people living in the North East of England have the lowest financial resilience in Great Britain at 43.35%.

Because this data is collected in real-time and updated into the Explorer monthly, the Economic Wellbeing Explorer also allows users to compare data on a yearly basis. Being able to see how data is trending over the year, and how it compares to the previous year, can help show how economic trends or events can impact people’s financial behaviours. 

In the time series below, we can see that each of the three nations follows a similar trend over time but that there are changes in low emergency resilience year on year. Comparing the first half of 2024 to the first half of 2025, we can see that rates remained relatively static until the summer, when they declined and then rose again towards the Christmas spending period. Whereas in the first half of 2025, we saw rates of low emergency resilience drop across all three nations and then begin to climb again over the summer months. 

With this information policymakers and researchers are able to compare and visualise data from across Great Britain to gain a multi-level view of financial wellbeing, empowering smarter resource planning, service design, policy development, and evidence-driven interventions.

Tailored for governments, NGOs, policy teams, and service providers, the Economic Wellbeing Explorer presents a dynamic, multi-level view of financial wellbeing, empowering smarter resource planning, service design, policy development, and evidence-driven interventions.