Experian returns to the City

Credit information provider Experian is to launch City Intelligence, a service for investment bankers, accountancy firms and lawyers in the City.

Sean Murphy, Experian sales director for City markets, said the service would be available from the summer, and be used by research departments and individual users in large City firms. Users will be able to access the service online, or integrate it into existing information systems.

Murphy said that breadth of content made City Intelligence a “one-stop shop” and that other benefits included accuracy, currency (the information is updated daily) and reliability.

The service will provide information on five million UK businesses, including limited and unlimited companies, startups, partnerships and sole traders.

Users will be able to look at 18 million records on existing and previous directorships, and view financial reports on 45 million overseas businesses. They will also be able to search a database of company records, including full accounts, annual returns and directors’ forms.

A monitoring service will provide live updates on target businesses based on events such as the latest filed accounts and changes in credit score or payment behaviour.

“If a company is strengthening or weakening, our data will be able to give an early warning that you might want to re-assess your risk in dealing with it,” said Murphy.

Experian has not had a presence in this market for some years, but decided to launch City Intelligence when it saw a gap in the market, said Murphy.

“The marketplace doesn’t have a lot of tier one suppliers of this kind of data,” he said. “We have a large presence in the large retail banks, and have had feedback from their investment banking areas asking ‘Why don’t you provide more of a core solution?’”

The service will be available as an annual subscription.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!