Unclaimed benefits breakdown

A few weeks ago we shared that over twelve thousand of our users can claim more than £60 million pounds in benefits they are due every year. These extra benefits can increase our users’ income by almost £5,000 per year or £406 per month, which can be a lifeline for low-income households.

One of our customers shared on BBC Radio 4’s Money Box how our benefits checker helped him to find out benefits he “had no idea it actually existed, which work out to be extra 200 pounds per month”. You can listen here the whole story at minute 9:45 and onwards and you can read here the news article.

We are writing this follow-up article to look deeper at why people are not claiming the benefits they are entitled to, the benefits they are missing and the extra money they could get.

Unclaimed benefits across the UK

The main headline in the welfare sector is that there are almost 8mn households that are missing £16bn in means-tested benefits. Welfare at a Social Distance undercovered that the most common reason why people miss their benefits is that they are unaware of the welfare benefits they are entitled to or assume that they are not eligible.

Unclaimed benefits of our users

The most common reasons why our users are missing some benefits are that they are not claiming benefits at all, or they are in the legacy benefits system but they would be better off claiming Universal Credits. Overall, 65% of our customers are missing on average £406/month in benefits and almost a third are missing between £250 and £1,000 a month.

Sharon MacPherson (CEO of Scotcash, one of our partners that have embedded our benefits calculator) provides a great insight into this situation: “I know many of our customers are worried that moving from legacy benefits to Universal Credit will mean they have less in their pockets, but in fact, on some occasions, the reverse is true. For example, one Scotcash applicant who was working, claiming Working Tax Credit and renting privately found their benefit had almost doubled when they claimed Universal Credit.”

Sharon’s experience is confirmed by our users’ aggregate data, people who are missing Universal Credits are missing on average £463/month and those missing Pension Credits are missing £630/month.

How we can help

Inbest platform identifies customers that might be entitled to additional benefits, proactively tell them how much they can get, and guide them on their benefits applications.

Get in touch to learn how we can help you to make sure that your customers get all the benefits they are entitled to!