‘£750 each’ if credit data giant loses legal battle

Almost every adult in the country could be in line for a £750 windfall if a blockbuster legal case against credit firm Experian is successful.

the background-checking company, which holds information on around 46million people, is being taken to court over claims it mis-sold customers’ data and built potentially inaccurate profiles which may have affected decisions on whether to give people credit.

lawyers acting for one representative claimant – liz Williams, 58, from Gillingham in Dorset – filed a writ at the High Court on Friday. she is claiming £750 in damages.

If her claim is successful, everyone whose data is held by Experian – around 95 per cent of the adult population – could be entitled to the same payment, taking the potential total cost to £34.5billion.

this would ruin Experian which is worth just under £21billion. It made a profit of £676million in the year to march 2020.

the claim against the company accuses it of collecting data from a swathe of online sources such as online questionnaires and website-tracking cookies and selling it on to make money.

Businesses, political parties and landlords use Experian’s data to check people’s creditworthiness. their findings may be used to inform anything from marketing materials to whether someone is deemed suitable to rent a house.

last october the Information Commissioner’s office (ICo) found Experian was selling people’s data on to third parties, including political parties, without their consent.

Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said information held by Experian was ‘unlawfully used by them in their capacity as a data broker, with poor regard for what people might want or expect’.

Experian did not accept the ICo’s findings, nor the potential £20million fine, and has launched an appeal.