Experian Innovation Lab Celebrates 15 Years of Transforming Industries

Lending is becoming more automated, more connected and increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. But across many lending processes, a significant gap remains between that vision and today’s reality. New research from Celent, a global research and advisory firm for the financial services industry, highlights that gap and how quickly financial institutions are moving to close it. According to the Celent 2026 Enterprise Decision Intelligence Survey, 82% of lenders plan to increase their spending on decision intelligence technology over the next two years. By 2028, Celent projects decision intelligence adoption will increase 32 percentage points in mortgage lending and 28 points in consumer lending, with more than half of lenders expected to use it across key lending processes. The automation gap creates an opportunity Automation is already well established in some areas of lending. Celent found that 68% of credit card decisioning is fully or mostly automated today, compared with 31% of small business term loan decisioning and just 19% for mortgages. Manual processes and fragmented technology can increase costs, slow decisions and make credit risk and fraud management more complex. For borrowers, they can mean additional friction and longer waits. Closing that gap requires more than automating individual steps. Financial institutions increasingly need to connect data, analytics, models, decisioning and workflows across the credit lifecycle. Decision intelligence moves into the mainstream Celent defines decision intelligence as an integrated approach that combines data, software, rules management systems and artificial intelligence to optimize decision making. The research finds that decision intelligence platforms have entered the mainstream as lenders look to connect capabilities that have traditionally operated separately. More than eight in 10 lenders plan to increase their investment in decision intelligence technology over the next two years. Data management is also among their leading investment priorities, reflecting the importance of a strong foundation for automation and AI. The result is a shift from automating individual lending decisions toward creating a connected decisioning environment across the credit lifecycle. AI makes trust even more important AI can accelerate this transformation by helping financial institutions extract more value from data, improve models and analytics, and make decisions faster. As AI evolves toward agentic systems capable of acting across complex workflows, the opportunity to automate more of the lending lifecycle grows. But so does the importance of trust. Celent finds financial institutions are prioritizing data integrity, lineage, privacy and control, along with secure deployment, explainability and auditability. As AI moves deeper into lending, institutions need to understand the data being used and how decisions are reached and governed. They also need ways to connect AI agents with trusted data, analytics and decisioning while maintaining governance, controls, auditability and human oversight. From decision intelligence to agentic AI Experian is helping financial institutions address these needs through the Experian Ascend Platform™, which brings together trusted data, advanced analytics, model development and deployment, decisioning, and fraud and identity capabilities in an integrated environment. Decisioning on the Experian Ascend Platform™ provides a flexible, component based automated decision engine designed to help lenders operationalize data, models and strategies across the credit lifecycle and turn intelligence into faster, more informed decisions at scale. Experian’s Agent Operating System™ builds on that foundation with a trusted agentic AI layer within the Experian Ascend Platform. It is designed to enable AI agents from Experian, financial institutions and partners to work together through a common trust, semantic and orchestration layer, with governance, auditability and human oversight built in. This creates a path from using AI for individual tasks toward orchestrating more complex workflows. The Agent Operating System is designed to connect agents and capabilities across data, models and workflows, allowing organizations to begin with targeted use cases and expand over time. By connecting data, analytics, decisioning, workflow and AI, financial institutions can create a common foundation for continuously improving decisions while laying the groundwork for trusted agentic automation. As Craig Focardi, Principal Analyst, Banking from Celent explains: “Decision intelligence is evolving from a point solution into enterprise infrastructure. As lenders extend these capabilities across products and the credit lifecycle, the opportunity is to create a common foundation that connects data, decisioning, workflow and AI, enabling institutions to make better decisions faster and continuously improve how those decisions are made.” The next phase of lending automation will be about more than applying AI to existing processes. It will be about creating a trusted, connected environment where data, analytics, decision intelligence and AI agents can work together across the credit lifecycle. For financial institutions, that offers a path toward more intelligent, orchestrated workflows while maintaining the governance, transparency and human oversight needed to operationalize AI confidently at scale. Source: Celent 2026 Enterprise Decision Intelligence Survey, May 2026.

Healthcare providers are preparing for a new wave of Medicaid eligibility verification requirements that will increase the need for timely, accurate income and employment verification. At the same time, organizations continue to face staffing pressures, reimbursement challenges and growing patient expectations. To help providers address this challenge, Experian Health has integrated Experian Verify into Patient Financial Clearance and its revenue cycle portfolio, bringing instant income and employment verification directly into healthcare workflows. By bringing these capabilities together, we can help providers reduce manual verification work and use verified information to support Medicaid and financial assistance screening earlier in the process. As new One Big Beautiful Bill Act requirements take effect on January 1, 2027, healthcare organizations need efficient ways to verify patient information without creating additional administrative burden. Traditionally, income and employment verification has relied on document collection, follow-up requests and time-consuming manual reviews. That can mean more work for staff, longer eligibility determinations and delays in determining an appropriate financial pathway for patients. By embedding Experian Verify within Patient Financial Clearance, providers can access verified income and employment information in seconds. For revenue cycle teams, that means using verified information to support Medicaid and financial assistance screening within the workflow they already use, rather than relying as heavily on document collection and follow-up. What I particularly like about this launch is how we brought capabilities from across Experian together around a specific client need. Patient Financial Clearance has long helped healthcare providers identify patients who may qualify for Medicaid or financial assistance and guide them to the most appropriate financial pathway. Experian Verify, meanwhile, provides instant income and employment verification through one of the nation’s largest employer payroll networks. Bringing these capabilities together gives providers another way to address growing verification demands within a single workflow. This is One Experian in action in a very impactful way. We’re combining data, technology and expertise from across the business to address a problem our healthcare clients are facing now. More importantly, we’re doing it in a way that fits into the workflows their teams already use. Ultimately, the benefits extend beyond providers. Faster access to verified information can help patients navigate financial assistance processes more easily, reduce paperwork and provide greater clarity around coverage and eligibility. As these requirements move closer, revenue cycle leaders should be looking now at where income and employment verification still depends on document collection and manual follow-up. Bringing verification directly into the financial clearance workflow is one more way we can help clients reduce administrative burden, support earlier decisions and help patients better understand their coverage or financial assistance options.

I joined Experian in 1993. In more than three decades since, I’ve had a front-row seat to a remarkable evolution in how financial institutions use data and analytics to make decisions.  The technology has changed. The amount and types of data available have changed. And the speed and sophistication with which we can turn that data into insight would have been difficult to imagine when I started my career.  Through all that, one principle remains the same. Better data can lead to better decisions, and better decisions can create more opportunities for consumers and financial institutions.  That’s why today’s announcement at Experian Vision 2026 is particularly meaningful to me.  We announced Experian Cashflow Data Bureau Inc., an important new foundation for how we believe financial institutions will use data to make decisions and support consumers.  Building on the power of credit  Credit data has been foundational to the financial system, and it will continue to play that essential role. But today, we have an opportunity to see more.  For years, Experian has invested in expanded data because we believe responsibly using additional information can help lenders develop a more complete picture of a consumer and ultimately help expand fair access to credit.  That can be especially important when a traditional credit history doesn’t tell the whole story. From earning a steady income, paying bills consistently, maintaining sufficient balances and responsibly managing their day-to-day finances, a consumer may have a limited credit file but still have a rich financial life.  Consumer-permissioned cash flow information can help provide insight into those behaviors and give lenders another view into a consumer’s current financial health and capacity. This represents a very useful and meaningful signal.  This isn’t about replacing credit data. It’s about building on an incredibly powerful foundation with additional, current information that can help lenders better understand the consumers they serve.  From proving the value to putting it to work  We’ve been building toward this future for years.  Our experience with expanded data and open banking has helped us develop increasingly sophisticated ways to turn bank transaction and balance information into useful insights. We’ve introduced Cashflow Attributes and Cashflow Score for consumer and commercial lenders and, the Experian Credit + Cashflow Score, which brings consumer-permissioned cash flow insights together with Experian’s traditional credit, trended and alternative data in a single model.   Along the way, we’ve seen the conversation with our clients and partners evolve.  Increasingly, they aren’t asking us whether cash flow information can provide value. They’re asking us how to put it to work.  How do I access the information? How do I test it against my portfolio? How do I turn millions of transactions into useful insights? How do I incorporate those insights into my existing strategies? And how do I do all of that responsibly and at scale?  Those are important questions, because the next generation of lending requires more than access to another source of data.  It requires infrastructure and trust.  That’s what Experian Cashflow Data Bureau Inc. is designed to provide.  The new consumer reporting agency operates under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and serves as the enabling foundation for Experian’s broader cash flow ecosystem. It brings together capabilities spanning consumer consent and connectivity, standardized cash flow reporting, categorization, attributes and scoring, analytics and decisioning.   We’ve spent decades building the data, analytics, technology and consumer reporting expertise financial institutions depend on every day. Now, we’re applying that experience and discipline to cash flow.  The goal is to make the combined power of credit and cash flow easier to put to work, giving our clients a more complete view of consumers and the ability to turn those insights into better-informed decisions through a single, trusted provider.  This is another step toward a future where our clients can understand a more complete picture of a consumer’s financial life, make better-informed decisions and create more opportunities for people to access the financial products and services they need.  I’m excited about where we’re headed and proud that we’re continuing to build the data, technology and infrastructure to help move the industry forward.  To learn more about our cash flow capabilities and what we’re building, please visit https://www.experian.com/experian-cashflow-bureau.