Virgin Money will implement Experian’s full suite of cloud-based technology, including credit and lending, fraud prevention, analytics, governance and compliance.
In the first phase of this strategic partnership, Virgin Money will leverage Experian’s solutions to offer personal loans to both new and existing partners later this year, the companies said in a Monday (June 24) press release. Currently, these loans are available only to existing customers.
In addition, Experian’s Marketplace will begin offering personal loans from Virgin Money in the fall, according to the release.
Virgin Money is a Tier 1 bank with 6.6 million customers in the United Kingdom, while Experian is a global data and technology company, per the release.
“This is an innovative and exciting partnership with Experian that will help us drive improvements across the digital customer experience and support peace of mind for customers,” Virgin Money Head of Unsecured Lending Katherine Lovell said in the release.
Virgin Money will use Experian’s cloud-based technology platform Ascend and its full suite of services, according to the release.
The company will leverage Experian’s data and analytics to deliver more personalized digital financial products, to streamline the application process, to enhance security and fraud protection, and to gain insights that will aid its product development, the release said.
Together with the personal loans, Virgin Money will use Experian’s solutions to launch “a significant number” of future projects designed to help people achieve their financial goals, per the release.
“This new strategic partnership is an important chapter in showcasing Experian’s evolution into a data technology software company,” Jose Luis Rossi, managing director, Experian UK&I, said in the release. “The team at Virgin Money can see the best-in-class team, data and software we have and how it will help them realize their long-term ambitions.”
The launch of this partnership comes about three months after the announcement that U.K. bank Nationwide Building Society is set to acquire Virgin Money for $2.7 billion.
The boards of the two companies said on March 7 that the merger will create Great Britain’s second-largest provider of mortgages and savings.
As for Experian, it announced in May that it acquired a stake in Reward, a company that powers bank and retail rewards programs, in order to scale solutions across international markets.
Job cuts in government, technology and retail led the way as U.S. employers announced the largest number of cuts in one month since May 2020.
Among the 275,240 job cuts announced in March, 216,215 were in government, 15,055 were in technology and 11,709 were in retail, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report released Thursday (April 3).
“Job cut announcements were dominated last month by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to eliminate positions in the federal government,” Andrew Challenger, senior vice president and workplace expert for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in the report. “It would have otherwise been a fairly quiet month for layoffs.”
The total number of job cuts made in March was more than three times the 90,309 cuts announced in March 2024, according to the report.
By sector, compared to March 2024, government job cuts were almost six times higher, technology cuts were about 6% higher and retail cuts were nearly twice as high, per the report.
All the government job cuts made in March occurred in the federal government, the report said.
The top reason employers gave for cutting jobs in March was “DOGE impact,” which was cited for 216,670 of the month’s cuts, according to the report.
Other common reasons included store, unit or department closing, to which 17,666 job cuts were attributed, and market/economic conditions, which accounted for 11,594 cuts, per the report.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas also said in the report that employers are planning to hire fewer workers than they were a year ago. Companies’ hiring plans dropped by about 37%, from 21,102 in March 2024 to 13,198 in March 2025, according to the report.
The specter of uncertain job security may accelerate a spending pullback that is already in motion, PYMNTS reported Wednesday (April 2). Consumer confidence that was already shaken may have been further impacted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest snapshot of the labor market released Tuesday (April 1), which found that the labor market slowed in February, with a decline in job openings over the past year.
The Conference Board reported March 25 that consumer confidence slipped for the fourth straight month in March, due in part to a plunge in consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business and labor market conditions.
