Data disclosure means providing information about a range of bank activities in defined geographical areas. The data provides information about the ways that banks invest the money the public deposits with them. Disclosure can also provide an opportunity to deepen understanding of market trends and to refine products and services to better serve local markets. It can also be used to compare the performance of different banks in a transparent and verifiable way to reward top performers and penalise those who fall short.

1. Guide to use Personal lending data at
neighbourhood level
Richard Browne
Birmingham City Council
Twitter:
@richardbrowne80
@fairbrum
#fairbrum
fairbrum.wordpress.com

2. Background
• Lending data from some of the major banks in UK
has the potential to be extremely useful in
addressing financial exclusion
• Long campaign by the likes of the Community
Investment Coalition, and Centre for Responsible
Credit to get data released
• Announced by Treasury in July last year, first data
released in December
• Danny Alexander: ‘enable smaller lenders identify
gaps in the market and allow businesses to hold their
local bank to account where they aren’t lending’.

3. So what has been released?
• 7 participating Lenders have released data - Barclays,
Lloyds, HSBC, RBS, Santander, Clydesdale & Yorkshire and
Nationwide.
• Data released for:
– Personal Loans
– Residential Mortgages
– Loans to SMEs
• Data released at Postcode sector level
• Level of outstanding balances in each sector based on BoE
reporting classifications
• Data reporting 6 months in arrears

4. What is a postcode sector?
• 9,000 sectors in UK
• Not uniform in size or population
• Not coterminous with other
boundaries

5. How to use the data
• The data can be downloaded in two places:
• Mortgage data:
http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/statistics/postcode
• Unsecured personal loans and SME loans:
http://www.bba.org.uk/news/statistics/
• Both of these contains aggregated data for all 7
banks and for all postcode sectors in England,
Scotland and Wales
• It is also possible to download data for each
bank individually

6. How to use the data
• If downloading in XLS. You will see 4 tabs of
data.
• Notes – Background information on the data
• Postcode Sector Lookup – To lookup data for
a specific postcode
• All Postcode Data – a series of dropdowns
through regions so show the relevant data
• Postcode Sector Data – A simple list of the
data

7. How to use the data
• Either through tab 3 or 4 you can copy and paste
the data relevant to your area
• Note the “Postcode Area name” column does
not link with local authority boundaries

8. • You should now have a list of postcode
sectors along with the total outstanding
loan in the sector area.
• You can now map this data or combine it
or try and correlate it with other data
How to use the data

9. • As stated Postcode Sectors don’t map neatly to Local
Authority boundaries – just look at Map of
Birmingham!
• If you want an accurate picture for your local
authority you will have to use GIS or a lookup to
extract those sectors in your area
How to use the data - Mapping

10. • To get the postcode sector boundaries you have to
use the Ordnance Surveys Codepoint data set.
• You usually have to pay for postcode boundary files
• However if your organisation is part of the OS PSMA
(Public Sector Mapping Agreement) then you can get
Codepoint with polygons for free.
• Most local authorities can get this information for
free
• http://bit.ly/postcodeboundaries
How to use the data - Mapping

11. • If you can only get full postcode
boundaries you then need to dissolve the
boundaries between different postcodes to
get the larger postcode sectors.
• How to do this depends on your GIS
package
• ArcGIS - http://bit.ly/1kWl9I6
• MapInfo - http://bit.ly/1s2eYG6
How to use the data - Mapping

12. Mapping the data
• You can then show simple
heat maps of areas with
high and low and total
lending

13. You could map
how your areas
compare to
England averages

14. • You will now have a list of postcode sector with a
total loan outstanding in each area
• There is no data for the average loan value
• Therefore you might want to create an average per
adult.
• To do this you need to download population statistics
for each area from the census
• Get data from:
http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011
• Or I’ve already downloaded it for you here!:
http://bit.ly/postcodesectorpop
How to use the data - Population

15. • This would lead to
a more relevant
“average map”

16. Other considerations
• You could choose to correlate the data
against deprivation or other outcomes.
• You just need to ensure that the data is at
postcode sector level
• For example you can extract proportion of
households considered deprived from the
2011 census

18. Lending Vs Deprivation
You could look at
correlation
between
deprivation and
lending in your
area

19. Richard Browne
Richard.browne@birmingham.gov.uk
Twitter: @richardbrowne80
If you have any questions please ask!