We’d like to provide an update regarding the treatment of non-consented account data within our bureau. Historically, non-consented accounts—those opened before data sharing with Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) was included in the terms and conditions—have only been shared into the Current Account Turnover (CATO) database as the majority of these are current accounts. These records were flagged as ‘non-consented’, meaning they could only be used by the providing institution for affordability assessments. Additionally, this data has been permitted for identity verification purposes by third parties, provided the actual account data is not returned (e.g. via services like Bank Wizard Absolute). Importantly, these records have never been reported into the CAIS database.
However, recent developments have seen a shift in how some institutions are handling this data:
In May 2024, one major bank began sharing its previously non-consented data into CATO with the consent status updated to ‘consented’. They also indicated plans to include these records in CAIS, eventually taking place in May 2025. In February 2025, another leading banking group confirmed it would follow a similar approach—updating the consent status of its non-consented CATO records and beginning to share them into CAIS for the first time in June.
These changes have not been driven by any new regulatory requirements or guidance. Instead, they reflect decisions made independently by each institution following internal reviews of compliance and data protection practices. These reviews concluded that customers had received sufficient notice under GDPR data privacy updates introduced since 2019.
The number of accounts added to CAIS so far is around 4.8 million. We will continue to monitor these developments and keep you informed of any further changes.
Date: 25th July 2025
We recently communicated to you regarding the proposed change that we are making to ensure that all Consumer defaults are visible, regardless of their value. We would like to provide you with an update to our work related to this change. We have continued our analysis on the low value defaults and have discovered other hidden records which merit further investigation.
While we still intend to make this change, we have decided to pause our intended change while we continue a wider analysis of the hidden records. If further changes are required, this will allow us to make these all at once rather than making multiple, smaller changes.
We will be in touch once our investigations have progressed and provide you with details about next steps and timeline of any confirmed changes.
Date: 1 July 2025
To further enhance the data quality of our Consumer CAIS bureau, and to avoid ambiguous results when matching records to the consumer, this month we are introducing a new rejection rule into the quality check process when loading CAIS files.
This rule will reject any new record received with ‘&’ in the name and will appear alongside the other rejection rules within the QC reports (txt & csv files) as ERR048 ‘REJECTED RECORDS WITH ‘&’ IN NAME’.
It will be included within the data quality report (xlsx file) soon.
NB. Existing records on the bureau with ‘&’ in the name will not be impacted.
Date: 2 June 2025
To provide further insight on the data quality of your CAIS data, this month we will be splitting out the volumes for the >6-year rejection rule within the QC report PRDEI55A.TXT into 3 parts:
This will allow you to identify the volume of rejects that have not been caused by records becoming 6 years old in between the CAIS file being generated and it being loaded to the bureau (Within 6 years 1 month).
NB. This does not apply to the volume and account numbers provided within ‘ERRORSTATS.CSV’ and ‘ERR008.CSV’, these will remain as is. The split will be included within the data quality report (xlsx file) soon.
Date: 2 June 2025
We've recently revamped the Documents section on this website to enhance user experience and accessibility. The updated section now features a more intuitive layout split by Consumer and Commercial and then into sections allowing users to easily navigate and locate useful documents. These improvements aim to save users time and effort, ensuring they can access the information they need efficiently and effectively saving the time of having to request them from an Experian contact. Try it out by clicking on the Documents link above.
Date: 5 March 2025
We are thrilled to announce an enhancement to the CAIS processing logic that will provide greater flexibility and accuracy in reporting. Previously, the deceased flag could only be reported against status codes U/8. With the latest update, this flag can now be reported against any status code, reflecting the true standing of the account. What Does This Mean for You?
For any questions or further information, please do not hesitate to contact our support team. Thank you for your continued partnership.
You may have recently been made aware of an upcoming change to the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN), a document which explains how Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) such as Experian obtain, process and share personal data about consumers and businesses. This change is now live and you can find the updated document on our website.
The previous version (1.1) was introduced in March 2022 so needed a refresh to ensure that it accurately reflects what happens today. For example, a recent development was the agreement for CAIS data to be shared with gambling companies.
If you followed our previous guidance and linked to the existing CRAIN document, there is no action required as the link has been updated automatically. However, if you have used a copy of the text for any webpages or training collateral, you will need to ensure that the wording is updated.
If you have any queries about the CRAIN, please refer to the FAQs. Alternatively, you can contact your Account Manager or e-mail CAISConsultancy@uk.experian.com for any general enquiries.
Just a reminder that our CAIS load process is automated so, unless our QC rules detect significant changes in your volumes, your submission file will be passed and loaded automatically within a few minutes of it being received. Once loaded, the file is ingested into the bureau so cannot be deleted. Please bear this in mind and ensure that you have completed thorough data quality checks on your file before submitting.
As a consequence of company acquisitions, supplier data migrations and Experian’s onboarding of new suppliers the make-up of the Experian consumer bureau has changed over the course of 2024. This is due to new consumer records being added or records being moved between account types. Overall the number of records per identity has increased with the average number of data items returned per search above 8. This means that we can provide a more rounded and complete view of consumers’ payment performance providing a more appropriate view to produce good Consumer Duty outcomes.
There has been a decrease in records classified as Gas (Account Type 40 - decrease 6,701,196), Electricity (Account Type 41 - decrease: 5,914,058) and Dual Fuel (Account Type 43 - decrease: 1,802,640). However this is more than compensated by an increase in the number of records in Public Utility (Account Type 21) increasing by 16,138,919 and Water (Account Type 39) has increased by 378,784.
There has also been an increase in the number of Current Accounts (Account Type 15) by 3,617,013 over the same period.
Other account types seeing an increase are Unsecured Loan (Personal Loans, etc.) (Account Type 02) by 3,281,126, Communications (Account Type 18) by 2,911,693 and Credit Card / Store Card (Account Type 05) by 2,087,888. On the flip side there has been a reduction in Home Credit (Account Type 61) by 1,999,205 and Mail Order (Account Type 08) by 952,165.
To request a new STS account please e-mail the following details to client.supportolcs@uk.experian.com.
Any clients that have an issue with their SSH key can contact globalfiletransfer-uk@experian.com.
As part of our commitment to providing you with the most appropriate and up to date services, it’s important for us to have a 360-degree understanding of a consumer’s credit commitments. So, at the end of July 2024, we expanded our Consumer CAIS database to include an additional 6m utility accounts. These additional records will benefit all products that use CAIS data and any returned results may show a sudden increase in accounts. This is expected and is beneficial in providing more data points for our customers.
The expansion of data will provide information on some of the UK population who currently have a thin credit file as well as improve the coverage, diversity and quality of our CAIS database. In turn, it will help you with assessing risks, improving authentication rates and making more accurate & profitable lending decisions.#
We have undertaken extensive analysis to understand if there may be any potential degradation following the addition of these accounts. Our results do not show any significant impact to the predictability of our bureau scorecards, or key Delphi hit rates.
If you have any questions regarding this additional data, please get in touch with our New CAIS team at newcais@experian.com.
A new version of the CAIS file specification (v15) has been published to provide additional guidance and has been amended to align with the new common industry format due to launch in the coming months. Please use this version going forward for any questions about how to supply Consumer CAIS data to Experian.
If you have any problems with uploading your file(s) on STS, the service desk can be contacted by phone on 0333 000 3030 or by email at TS.servicedesk@uk.experian.com.
Please remember to send us any updates to your contact information as it is really important that we can get in touch with you for any queries about your data. Remember to send through any changes to personnel or their contact details to cais.control@experian.com and we will ensure that we hold the most up-to-date information.
If you have any specific questions about your data you can also contact CAISconsultancy@uk.experian.com and one of our team will be happy to help.
Data Processing & Loading:
Data Quality:
Data Processing & Loading:
Data Quality:
To request a new STS account please e-mail the following details to client.supportolcs@uk.experian.com
Any clients that have an issue with their SSH key can contact globalfiletransfer-uk@experian.com
Experian working with UK Finance, have made changes to the fair processing notices that will be used for credit account information sharing. This can be seen in the CRAIN notification document that can be found below.
This programme aims to improve and monitor the quality of information that our CAIS data sharers submit. If you are serious about data quality and wish to have a data quality review as part of this programme, please email CAISConsultancy@uk.experian.com