Announcing the four Smart Data Discovery Challenge winners and a new £750,000 prize

Lightning Riders, the team behind the Rodeo app used by more than 15,000 drivers, proposes a Smart Earnings Data scheme to enable gig workers to access and control their earnings data. Millions of gig workers in the UK are paid by dynamic algorithms on platforms like Uber, Deliveroo, Just Eat and Amazon. As ‘independent contractors’ they need to manage their finances and taxes and make informed decisions about who to work for and which jobs to accept. Smart earnings data would unlock new financial tools for drivers and enable gig workers to exercise their market power, improve their financial security and facilitate greater tax compliance.

An online financial assistant providing consumers with personalised money-saving comparison offers for a wide variety of cross-sector services. Consumers could consent to always-on monitoring of their current products and services in relation to market changes, to check that they are always on the most appropriate product and terms, alerting them to potential savings when available. The entrants believe it could enable millions of UK consumers to save hundreds of pounds annually.

Integrating supermarket data to recommend healthier food alternatives, cost savings, budget-friendly shopping strategies, meals based on purchase data, and more sustainable food choices.

An app that allows consumers to gain added value from their purchase data through rewards. Integrating open banking purchase-level data with retailer’s receipt-level data (for example from in-store loyalty cards) could prove more valuable for consumers and businesses. This integration would empower consumers to take  greater control and ownership over their data while offering opportunities to earn greater rewards.

Integrating shipping supply chains and cargo manifests into the Open Banking and trade finance sectors could help tackle the potential £224bn cost of current inefficiencies. It would integrate electronic tracking of vessels, containers, their contents, and the ownership of goods into online banking and trade finance applications. The move could free up liquidity in international financial markets, prevent delay at ports (and associated food waste that come with this) by integrating with “trusted trader” schemes, and help tackle organised crime.

Buying a house takes on average 22 weeks, is the third most stressful life event, and comes with high failure rates, unexpected costs, fraud and poor customer experience. The data needed comes from multiple, disparate sources, with each player in the transaction applying their own compliance standards. The use case aims to use data from across the property ecosystem to create a fully digital property pack for transactions so that data can be sourced and shared with trust.

Moverly enables effective data sharing across the real estate industry, connecting estate agents, banks, surveyors, and conveyancers, to make the process of buying and selling a property simpler.  The platform is designed to support estate agents and consumers alike, offering an end-to-end property transaction experience powered by the capabilities of open data and AI and integrating the Property Data Trust Framework. 

Unlike domestic consumers, small businesses are not protected by the energy price cap and face significant market volatility. By using half-hourly smart meter data, tariff data and credit checks, the platform would offer tailored energy solutions to businesses – it would enable users to anticipate future consumption changes before committing to contracts and assist in transitioning to time-of-use tariffs when economically viable.

An ESG platform, employing Smart Data from services SMEs already use, including Open Banking, Open Finance, energy data, employee travel, and business software. Smart ESG provides owners, customers, employees, and other stakeholders with a comprehensive understanding of their business and its impact across all three Environmental, Social, and Governance pillars, as well as carbon emissions.

A first-of-its-kind data hub for small and micro businesses, providing rich insights enabling local, high street businesses to better compete with chains and bigger retailers. It combines consented Smart Data about a business’s revenue and expenditure with Mastercard real-time spend data and carbon calculation technology, enabling businesses to better engage their customers, manage their carbon footprint and contribute to net zero. This provides businesses with timely, robust data to grow their own business and create long-term resilience, building vibrant community-led high streets.

Mature technologies that reduce energy bills and carbon emissions, such as solar, home batteries, smart EV chargers, heat pumps and insulation, require finance. Banks want to finance them, but they are not energy experts. Combining household financial data with energy use data will enable innovative customer financing journeys that provide access to the cheapest financing sources that make low carbon homes accessible to the mass market.

More people and businesses are transitioning from being electricity consumers, to “prosumers” who may generate, store and consume their own energy and participate in flexibility or energy efficiency schemes. However this shift could prove costly and take time. Using energy, financial and building data, Hexapower is developing AI systems that would help consumers to find the best way to become “prosumers”.

There is a lack of understanding among consumers about who offers domestic charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs) and the appropriate energy tariffs. It is hoped that it could incentivise the uptake of new EVs while helping shift their energy consumption to off-peak periods, avoiding both unnecessary expense to owners and additional high-carbon generation at peak times. 

Designed in collaboration with  Tier-1 UK bank, the HomeHealth score combines Open Banking data and Smart Energy data with the aim of humanising consumer choice in home finance, energy consumption and CO2 emissions reduction. Smartlayer aims to open up personalised, wallet-sensitive, smart home finance options to the many households currently excluded from green finance.