Anglian Water has joined the UK’s only data exchange specifically about consumers in financial arrears.

The water company has joined HeliX, a data exchange that allows creditors to share a new level of knowledge about consumers in arrears to inform debt collection agency (DCA) allocation decisions and recoveries activity. It enables creditors and their DCAs to obtain a single view of a customer including their recent payment behaviour.

The data exchange was launched by TDX, which hosts platforms for debt collection, in May.

In April, Anglian Water agreed a three-year contract with TDX for support with placement and management of a large proportion of its domestic debt accounts using PLATO, the UK’s largest debt placement and management platform.

Spencer Hough, head of billing and collections at Anglian Water said:

“HeliX enables us to gain a greater understanding of our customer circumstances when looking to agree payment plans with them.

“Anglian Water is pleased to be a founding member of HeliX and play an active part in improving data quality in our industry.”

Elliot Jackson, director of HeliX said:

“As a water provider Anglian brings the HeliX user group a unique consumer data set which is not otherwise available today.”

Earlier this month, Severn Trent Water agreed a partnership with credit reference agency Equifax to share its customers’ default payment data in an attempt to help it collect bad debt.