Womenomics

A fascinating article in the Sunday Times recently highlighted readers on how to predict a divorce. It appears that credit card statements tell their own story.

So what are the alarm signals that suggest divorce might be in the offing? "There are many transactional signs," explains Professor Ben Fletcher, head of psychology at Hertfordshire University. "Spending on extra lunches or staying in hotels more frequently may indicate an affair. Perhaps the couple shared one weekly food shop and now buy separately. You'll see people preparing for a split by changing their wardrobe or taking on new financial responsibilities."

Welcome to the brave new world of super-crunching, in which large retailers, credit companies, governments and health providers store tens of billions of our financial transactions in huge data warehouses and send computer programmes scuttling through them like electronic spiders, looking for patterns that might mark individuals out as a health risk, debt risk or even terrorist risk.

It's a multibillion-dollar industry and, appropriately for a nation of net-curtain twitchers, the Brits are market leaders.

For example, the Canadian credit company Tire established that customers who went to sports bars were most likely to miss a payment, while buyers of carbon monoxide detectors and premium birdseed were a safer bet.

Each time you call your credit card firm, a computer rush-analyses every transaction you've made over the past 12 months and displays its assessment to the call centre operator answering the phone. And that's just the start.