The Digital Sandbox supports innovators and data providers at various stages of product development. Learn more about what it can offer to you and your business.
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Use our decision tool to find out which is the right service for you, and answers to the most frequently asked questions.
Data powers innovation, while access to data is a common challenge across innovators.
The Digital Sandbox can offer General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant datasets in a secure environment, as well as opportunities for collaboration to help enable experimentation and scaling for proof of concepts.
First piloted in 2020, the Digital Sandbox has shown that collaboration and access to data can stimulate beneficial innovation in the market. Find out more about the Digital Sandbox pilots.
Almost 6 in 10 small and medium enterprise participants from the previous 2 pilots have made positive progress including receiving funding and partnership, launching products or receiving industry rewards and recognitions.
We have now launched the permanent Digital Sandbox. If you are an innovator that wishes to participate in the Digital Sandbox, sign up to the platform, apply to the ‘Permanent Digital Sandbox’ event and choose the sector that you wish to apply for:
We will get back to you within 4 weeks regarding decision on your application.
If you are a data provider that wish to list your data assets on the digital sandbox platform, please contact us:
We also welcome experts, incubators, investors, regulators, industry bodies and fellow innovators to observe and support solution development in the digital sandbox. If you are interested to become a mentor, please register here:
How to access the Permanent Digital Sandbox
Core features
Data categories
On a high level, the data assets on the digital sandbox platform cover the following areas:
- entities data
- individual data, including company directors and auditors
- consumer data, including consumer profiles, complaints and consumptions
- payments and transactional data
- financial statements data
- loans and credit data, including credit reports, credit history, lender and mortgages data
- investment data including self-managed fund data and bond yields data
- registration and license data, including licensed financial advisers, banned and disqualified person data, registered business data
- Covid-19 related data
Eligibility criteria
| Criteria | Key question |
|---|---|
| In scope | Will your product or service have exposure to the UK market and / or consumers? You don’t need to be UK-based and international businesses will be eligible to apply. |
| Genuine innovation | Are you doing something that’s ground-breaking or significantly different to mainstream offerings? This could be something completely new, or it could be a new market or a new version of an existing model. |
| Consumer benefit | How does your innovation deliver benefits to the consumers or markets? And how are the risks mitigated? |
| Readiness | Do you have a well-thought business plan and revenue model? Do you have resources and expertise to develop your solutions using the data provided? Do you have clearly defined testing outcomes, success metrics, timelines and go-to-market plans? |
| Need for support | Can you articulate what data or support you need from the Digital Sandbox and how will you benefit from it? |