Experian Wins 2022 FinTech Breakthrough Award for “Best Consumer Lending Product”

by Kim Le 3 min read March 31, 2022

At Experian, we know that financial institutions, fintechs and lenders across the entire spectrum – small, medium and large, are further exploring and adopting AI-powered solutions to unlock growth and improve operational efficiencies. With increasing competition and a dynamic economy, AI-driven strategies across the entire customer lifecycle are no longer a nice to have, they are a must.

Our dedication to delivering on this need for our clients is why we are thrilled to be recognized as a Fintech Breakthrough Award winner for the fifth consecutive year.

Experian’s Ascend Intelligence ServicesTM (AIS) platform hosts a suite of analytics solutions and has been named “Best Consumer Lending Product” in the sixth annual FinTech Breakthrough Awards. This awards program is conducted by FinTech Breakthrough, an independent market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global fintech market today. This is the second consecutive year that AIS has been recognized with a FinTech Breakthrough Award, previously being selected for the “Consumer Lending Innovation Award” in 2021.

“Winning another award from FinTech Breakthrough is a fantastic validation of the success and momentum of our Ascend Intelligence Services suite. Now more than ever, the world is in a state of constant change and companies are being reactive, with data scientists spending too much time on manual, repetitive data-wrangling tasks, at a time when they cannot afford to do so,” said Shri Santhanam, Experian’s executive vice president and general manager of Global Analytics and AI. “Companies need to be able to rapidly develop and deploy ML-powered models in an agile way at low cost. We are now able to offer this to more lenders no matter their size.”

With AIS, Experian can empower financial services firms to make the best decisions across the customer life cycle with rapid model and strategy build, seamless deployment, optimization and continuous monitoring.

The AIS suite is comprised of two key solution models:

  1. Ascend Intelligence Services Acquire is a managed services offering that enables financial institutions to increase approval rates and control bad debt by acquiring the right customers and providing the best offers. This is accomplished through a rapid AI/ML model build that will help better quantify the risk of an individual applicant. Next, a mathematically optimized decision strategy is designed to provide a more granular view of the applicant and help make the best decision possible based on the institution’s specific business goals and constraints. The combination of the AI/ML model and optimized decision strategy provides increased predictive power that mitigates risk and allows more automated decisions to be made. The model and strategy are seamlessly deployed to help deliver business value quickly.
  2. Ascend Intelligence Services™ Limit enables financial institutions to make the right credit limit decisions at account origination and during account management. Limit uses Experian’s data, predictive risk and balance models and our powerful optimization engine to design the right credit limit strategy that maximizes product usage, while keeping losses low.

To learn more about how Ascend Intelligence Services can support your business, please explore our solutions page.

Learn more

For a list of all award winners selected for the 2022 FinTech Breakthrough Awards, click here.

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Cash Flow Insights: Powering the Next Evolution in Lending

For decades, credit data has given lenders a trusted foundation for assessing risk. Now, consumer-permissioned cash flow data is adding another layer of insight into consumers’ financial lives, including income, spending, liquidity and changing financial obligations. The opportunity is significant. Nearly one in five consumers lacks access to or has damaged credit. New Experian research also shows that 60% of consumers who have previously been denied credit or received less favorable terms than expected believe the outcome would have been different if lenders had considered their recent income and banking activity alongside their credit history. 1,2 For lenders, cash flow insights can provide additional context about a consumer’s financial capacity and support more informed underwriting decisions. The next challenge is making those insights easier to use consistently and responsibly at scale. What are cash flow insights? Cash flow insights are derived from consumer-permissioned banking data and provide visibility into how money moves into and out of a consumer’s accounts. Depending on the information available, cash flow data can provide insight into financial behaviors such as: Income and income stability: Regular and irregular income streams and changes over time Spending and recurring expenses: Everyday spending patterns and ongoing financial obligations Account balances and liquidity: Available funds and changes in account balances Debt obligations: Loan payments and other recurring debt commitments Cash flow patterns: How money moves into and out of accounts over time Traditional credit information provides a rich history of how consumers have managed credit. Cash flow insights add context about their current financial activity and capacity, providing lenders with a more complete view of financial health. Cash flow insights can also add predictive value to risk assessment. Experian analysis shows Cashflow Score can deliver up to a 25% lift in predictive performance over conventional credit scores when tailored to targeted risk tiers.3 How lenders can put cash flow insights to work at scale As interest in cash flow insights grows, the conversation is moving beyond what the data can reveal to how financial institutions can use it consistently and responsibly. That requires standardized consumer reporting, clear governance and decision-ready insights that can work within established lending processes. The launch of Experian Cashflow Data Bureau at Vision 2026 reflects this shift from access to adoption. The new consumer reporting agency operates under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and is designed to help financial institutions adopt consumer-permissioned cash flow insights at scale. A key part of that foundation is the cash flow consumer report, which organizes consumer-permissioned banking information into a standardized consumer report regulated under the FCRA. This gives lenders a consistent foundation for incorporating cash flow information into lending decisions while providing consumers with access to the information in their report. Turning greater visibility into better decisions The next evolution in credit isn’t about choosing between traditional credit and cash flow data. Each provides a different perspective. Traditional credit information offers deep insight into how consumers have managed credit over time. Cash flow insights can add context about financial activity and capacity. Bringing those perspectives together can give lenders greater visibility into consumers’ financial health and help them better distinguish between risk and resilience, support more informed decisions and identify opportunities to responsibly expand access to credit. As cash flow adoption continues to grow, its value will come from how effectively it complements the information lenders already use. The opportunity isn't simply to see more data. It's to turn that additional visibility into smarter, more informed decisions. Explore how Experian Cashflow Data Bureau is helping financial institutions put consumer-permissioned cash flow insights into practice at scale. Learn more [1] Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Market for Credit Building: Demand, Product Characteristics and Consumer Uses, 2026. [2] Experian commissioned Atomik Research to conduct an online survey of 2,000 U.S. adults age 18+. Fieldwork took place July 16–21, 2026. Margin of error: +/- 2.2 percentage points at a 95% confidence level. [3] Based on Experian analysis when Cashflow Score is compared with conventional credit scores, tailored to targeted risk tiers. Predictability based on KS.

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