Meet FINDS: New opportunities for economic research with financial data

Speaker: Oliver Berry, Research Engagement, Smart Data Foundry

The Financial Data Service (FINDS) provides secure access to de-identified financial data from millions of GB bank customers and thousands of UK SMEs creating new opportunities to explore economic resilience, income volatility and regional economic change.

FINDS is part of the UKRI-funded Smart Data Research UK (SDR UK) programme and is delivered by Smart Data Foundry, supporting responsible access to financial data for research in the public interest.

This webinar will showcase the datasets available through FINDS and demonstrate how financial behaviour data can complement traditional economic statistics to provide deeper insights into finances and wider economic trends.

Oliver Berry, Research Engagement at Smart Data Foundry, will walk through the financial data resources available to researchers, including newly released data on SMEs, and highlight examples of research exploring labour market dynamics, fuel poverty, and changes to spending behaviour in response to economic policy. 

The session will also outline how researchers can access the data through the secure Trusted Research Environment (TRE) and explain the process for developing research proposals using FINDS data.

The webinar is aimed at academic researchers, policy analysts, think tanks, charities and organisations interested in using financial data to support research and policy development.

Key Takeaways

Attendees will gain a practical understanding of the datasets available through FINDS, the types of research questions they can support, and how to engage with the service.