Integrated into TransUnion’s Affordability Report, the new feature empowers clients to predict with greater accuracy the future affordability of consumers, enabling more accurate assessments and improved credit risk performance.

Trended Affordability builds on the lessons of TransUnion’s TrueVision product, which provides a trended view of traditional credit risk attributes, incorporating new algorithms, attributes and a new score that can help clients understand the unique pattern of each customer’s affordability position over time.

By providing additional insights based on a customer’s affordability position over the last 12 months, Trended Affordability can help lenders to make more informed predictions on consumers’ future financial behaviour and stability. This can improve credit risk assessments and enhance affordability evaluations, helping lenders make responsible lending decisions with fair outcomes for both the business and consumer.

Kelli Fielding, chief product officer at TransUnion in the UK, said: “Trended Affordability is the biggest development in affordability reporting in recent years, setting a new standard for financial decision-making and reinforcing our continued investment in innovation. As the first to provide trended data on affordability that delivers a more robust view of a consumer’s affordability position, we’re enabling our clients to stay ahead in the market by making more accurate assessments of affordability, whilst mitigating risk.”

The enhanced Affordability Report combines trended and traditional credit and affordability data to create a new set of trended algorithms and a Trended Affordability Score. By predicting a consumer’s future affordability position, the feature typically delivers an uplift in applications accepted whilst maintaining the same bad rate.

Clare Hollis, director of core credit at TransUnion in the UK, commented: “By providing more precise affordability predictions and improving subsequent credit risk performance, Trended Affordability adds significant value to client decisioning. With many of the new trended attributes outperforming existing affordability reporting, we can deliver more accurate assessments for our clients as well as enhance outcomes for consumers. The use of trended data not only sets a new industry standard but also reinforces TransUnion’s position as a market leader in affordability assessment, helping to protect consumers and support financial resilience in navigating economic uncertainties.”