Credit referencing agency Experian says it has been selected by a data quality forum established by eight UK financial services firms to conduct a study into the feasibility of benchmarking the quality of customer information held by the banks.
Experian refuses to disclose the financial institutions taking part in the forum, but says its marketing services bureau will validate and enhance almost one million of the members' customer records as part of the benchmarking exercise.
Aggregated results analysed by Experian will then provide the forum with an average data quality benchmark against variables such as accuracy of addresses, home telephone numbers and gender.
Sophie Sail, head of product management for Experian's marketing services division, says: "Our work provides the forum's members with an excellent starting point from which steps can be taken to develop a financial services industry standard for data quality."