140,000 citizens of Amsterdam have an income below 120% of the statutory social minimum. That's 88,000 households. And although Amsterdam sees the figures improving, 1 in 4 citizens has debts. In order to get better grip on this problem, to recognize people with debts earlier and to better help them, the municipality of Amsterdam asked Trendata for insights into market demand and consumers’ information needs in relation to debts and financial problems. Can we identify blind spots regarding these problems at an earlier stage?

• Real time insights reveal blind spots in relation to debt problems that professional counselors are not able to identify in one-on-one consultations with clients. This can be explained by the fact that the client is often ashamed of his/her situation
  
• There is a high and growing search demand for ‘debt and financial problems’, the data is very diverse and shows a growing trend. Keywords such as ‘debts’, ‘social assistance’, ‘unemployment benefit’, ‘unemployment’, ‘the food and clothing bank’ are popular search queries.
  
• There was a remarkably high demand for topics such as ‘quickly borrowing 40 euro’s, ‘buying an iPhone 12 Pro without BKR registration’ and "where to borrow money"

The insights enable the municipality to pick up signals earlier. They use the valuable data to further optimize their communication strategy and consulting services.