All posts by Destiny.White@experian.com

As AI agents take on tasks for people and businesses, trust is essential. Good technology should make something difficult a little easier, whether it helps someone understand their finances, helps a business spot fraud, or enables an agent to act on a person’s behalf securely. A few recent honors recognize the people and work behind those kinds of advances at Experian. Recognizing leaders in AI Vijay Mehta, Experian’s Global Chief AI Officer, and Kathleen Peters, Chief Innovation Officer, Identity & Fraud, were named to the 2026 H2O AI 100. The list recognizes leaders advancing the practical impact of AI. Vijay’s work includes bringing teams across Experian together around a shared AI strategy. As he described in a recent interview with AI Innovator, Experian is moving beyond adding AI tools to existing tasks and looking at how AI agents could change the way some work gets done. Kathleen leads Experian’s work on Experian Agent Trust™; a framework developed with our partner ecosystem to support agentic commerce. Helping people make sense of their finances Experian Virtual Assistant, EVA™, received a Gold 2026 Globee® Award in the Best Conversational AI & Next-Gen Chatbot Solution category. EVA is available to more than 85 million Experian members. In secure conversations, it can help people understand their credit and get a clearer view of their finances in real time. Members can review spending categories, spot notable transactions, and find recurring bills or subscriptions. EVA can also help members decide what to do with those insights. They can manage subscriptions, explore prequalified credit card offers from third party lenders through Experian Marketplace, and take actions related to their Experian credit file, such as freezing their Experian credit report. EVA combines AI with Experian’s data expertise and financial information members choose to securely connect. Members decide which accounts to connect and can revoke access at any time. Experian designs and monitors its AI systems with governance, testing, and privacy controls intended to support accuracy, fairness, transparency, and consumer protection. A workplace shaped by its people Experian ranked No. 6 on the 2026 Fortune Best Workplaces in Technology list, four places higher than last year and its highest ranking to date. The list is based on employee feedback about their workplace experience. That recognition belongs to the people who bring ideas forward, work across teams, and build technology for consumers and businesses. Innovation recognized in Southern California At Octane’s 2026 High Tech Awards, Experian was named Best Large Company Disruptor/Innovator. The awards celebrated companies and leaders helping shape Southern California’s innovation community. Experian Agent Trust was also named a finalist in the Cloud AI Awards’ “Best AI Infrastructure Solution” category. That recognition highlights the importance of building trusted foundations as AI agents take on more tasks. Together, these honors reflect how Experian is putting AI and innovation to work: helping people understand their finances, helping businesses spot fraud, and building trusted foundations for AI agents to act with a person’s permission. They also recognize the people behind that work, whose ideas and collaboration turn technology into useful experiences for consumers and businesses.

In a move to advance our mission of simplifying healthcare and helping providers collect much-needed dollars throughout the revenue cycle, Experian Health has acquired eInsights, a leading insurance discovery company. eInsights has helped clients recover more than $225 million in reimbursements, while helping prevent patients from being billed for care covered by insurance. Together, the capabilities strengthen our insurance discovery offering with a robust, end-to-end solution. Healthcare organizations can leverage Experian Health’s front-end product and this safety net to identify coverage after a patient receives care. The eInsights technology continually searches for coverage that may have been missed earlier in the revenue cycle, fills gaps in insurance information, and identifies coverage that can lead to reimbursement. eInsights – a top 20 pick for Emerging Solutions by KLAS in 2025 – also offers retroactive Medicaid identification, secondary coverage identification, and coordination of benefits optimization. A Complicated Benefits Landscape Identifying insurance coverage at registration is a critical first step, but it often provides only a snapshot in time. Coverage can change, become active, or surface only after care has been delivered. When those benefits go unidentified, providers risk losing reimbursement they have earned, while patients may receive bills for services that should have been covered. As coverage dynamics continue to evolve, particularly amid upcoming Medicaid eligibility changes, healthcare organizations need more comprehensive tools to identify coverage throughout the revenue cycle. Bringing eInsights into Experian Health gives our clients another opportunity to find that coverage – from the beginning of the patient journey through the back end of the revenue cycle. In an environment of rising costs and increasing administrative challenges, providers can't afford to leave earned reimbursement on the table. Recovering missed revenue helps address one of healthcare's most significant financial pain points, enabling organizations to remain financially strong while maintaining focus on patient care. We are excited to welcome the eInsights team and integrate these powerful capabilities into Experian Health, creating a more comprehensive solution that helps healthcare organizations capture earned reimbursement while reducing confusion and unexpected costs for patients.

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.

Homeownership has always been about more than buying a house. For many people, it represents stability, independence and a milestone they’ve been working toward for years. That’s part of what makes today’s housing conversation so important. There are real pressures affecting when and how consumers can buy, but the desire to become a homeowner hasn’t gone away. I was reminded of that during a recent conversation with Gwen Garnett, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of HomeFree-USA’s Center for Financial Advancement®. Gwen and her team work directly with aspiring homeowners, and our conversation kept coming back to a simple idea: while we can’t control every factor affecting the housing market, we can do more to help consumers understand where they stand and what’s possible. Our research underscores the opportunity. Nearly half of Gen Z adults we surveyed expect to be in a position to purchase a home within four years. At the same time, 34% of consumers said they have delayed exploring homeownership because they assumed their credit history or score wouldn’t qualify them. For me, those findings tell two sides of the same story. People still want to own homes, but some may be stepping away from that goal before they fully understand their options. Give consumers more clarity Consumers shouldn’t have to wait until they’re ready to fill out a mortgage application to understand their credit, financial position or the steps that could help them prepare. That doesn’t remove the broader affordability pressures they face. But it can give people greater clarity about the factors within their control and more time to act on them. Look beyond the traditional picture We can also continue evolving the way we understand consumers’ financial lives. A prospective homebuyer may have years of consistent rental payments or other positive financial behaviors that provide additional context about how they manage their obligations. Relevant expanded data can help bring more of that picture into view. This isn’t about collecting more information simply because it’s available. It’s about identifying information that can help create a more complete understanding of consumers and risk. Consumers appear to see value in that approach. More than half of those we surveyed said they would be more interested in pursuing homeownership if lenders considered additional positive payment history such as rent and utilities. Bring different strengths together Of course, information only goes so far if consumers don’t know what to do with it. That’s one of the reasons I value conversations with Gwen. Experian and HomeFree-USA bring different perspectives to the same challenge. Companies like ours can help consumers better understand their financial position. Community organizations can help turn that information into a plan grounded in someone’s individual circumstances. And lenders become an important resource when a consumer is ready to explore financing. When those strengths work together, we can make the process easier to understand. There is no single answer to housing affordability. But there are meaningful ways we can help aspiring homeowners today: give them greater clarity, understand more of their financial lives and connect them with information and guidance that helps them make informed decisions. For consumers who still see homeownership in their future, that can make a meaningful difference. You can watch my conversation with Gwen below and learn more about HomeFree at https://homefreeusa.org/.

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.  

For many small businesses, the need for credit can come well before they’ve had time to build a deep credit history. A business may be growing, bringing on employees or investing in new equipment, but its credit file may still offer a limited view of its financial health. That challenge is becoming increasingly relevant as more businesses enter the market. The number of small businesses in the U.S. has increased from 30.7 million in 2019 to 36.2 million in 2026, according to Experian’s latest Commercial Pulse.¹ For lenders, that growth creates a familiar underwriting challenge. Traditional commercial credit data remains essential to assessing risk, but a limited credit history can leave lenders with fewer signals to evaluate a newer business. This can make it harder to distinguish between businesses that simply lack credit history and those that present greater credit risk. Cash flow data can help close that information gap. Permissioned business banking data provides current signals related to liquidity, revenue trends, operating expenses, debt exposure and repayment capacity. When used alongside commercial credit data, these insights can add context when the credit file alone doesn’t tell the full story. Building on what we’ve learned We’ve spent the last several years looking at how we can use cash flow insights to help more consumers access financial products and improve their financial health. And we’ve seen meaningful results. More than 19 million consumers have connected their accounts to Experian Boost or our Personal Financial Manager to improve their credit scores. And by leveraging consumer-permissioned banking information through our Cashflow Attributes and Cashflow Score, our clients can manage risk more effectively and increase fair access to credit.  More recently, we’ve integrated our Cashflow Attributes into Experian Activate, our consumer marketplace, to help connect consumers with credit offers that better reflect their financial circumstances. Extending cash flow insights to commercial lending Today, we are extending that experience to commercial lending with the launch of Experian Cashflow Attributes for commercial lenders. The solution transforms business bank transaction data into more than 500 attributes that can be incorporated into underwriting and decisioning strategies. The value is not in replacing established credit information, but in adding relevant signals when the commercial credit file does not yet tell the full story. Our preliminary analysis shows Cashflow Attributes for commercial lenders are particularly useful for businesses with thin credit files, providing up to a 24% lift in predictive performance when paired with traditional commercial credit data. As more new businesses enter the market, combining commercial credit and cash flow insights can help lenders assess risk with greater context, refine underwriting strategies and identify opportunities to extend credit responsibly. This is a meaningful next step in our commitment to helping the industry put cash flow insights to work at scale. And there is more ahead. As cash flow insights become a more integral part of financial services, we see significant potential to apply them in new ways, helping financial institutions make more informed decisions and expand financial opportunities for the consumers and businesses they serve. To learn more about Experian Cashflow Attributes for commercial lenders, please visit https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260929177531/en. [1] Experian, “More Businesses, New Risk Signals: Rethinking Small Business Credit,” August 24, 2026.

For years, cybersecurity has focused on a familiar objective: protecting data. While that remains critical, the conversation is evolving. Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how organizations operate, communicate and serve customers, while also enabling cybercriminals to create increasingly convincing scams, impersonations and fraud schemes. As a result, consumers are left wondering if they can trust that a message, voice, image or request is real. That growing uncertainty is a key theme in our newly released 2027 Data Breach Industry Forecast: Consumers at Risk. After more than 24 years helping organizations prepare for and respond to data breaches, we’ve observed an important shift. The conversation is expanding beyond breach prevention and response to broader questions about identity, authenticity and confidence in digital interactions. A trend we envision will heighten in 2027 is the growing distrust among consumers to the point of paralysis on when to act. Security alerts, fraud warnings and breach notifications are designed to help people protect themselves, but recipients may no longer be able to confidently distinguish real communications from fake ones. This will cause a gap in consumer protection and leave people potentially more vulnerable than ever before. We also examine how years of exposed personal information, combined with increasingly powerful AI tools, could enable cybercriminals to build highly detailed digital representations of individuals. At the same time, consumers may respond by becoming more protective of their identities, adopting new privacy behaviors and finding creative ways to make personal information less valuable to criminals. Together, these shifts could reshape how organizations engage with customers, how consumers manage their digital identities and how trust is established online. From identity verification and authentication technologies to other methods of establishing legitimacy, we believe organizations will greatly increase investing in tools and services next year that help build confidence in an increasingly complex digital environment. Your Trusted Partner The purpose of our annual forecast is to encourage organizations to think ahead, prepare for emerging challenges and consider how today's trends could influence tomorrow's risks. At Experian, we remain committed to helping organizations navigate those challenges, whether through verification tools, breach preparedness, response or identity protection. Because in the years ahead, maintaining trust may become just as important as protecting data. To read the full predictions report, click here.

I’m often asked what drives innovation at a company like ours. People might expect the answer to be technology, data or artificial intelligence. While there’s no question these things matter, I believe innovation often starts with something much simpler: listening. Several years ago, our clients came to us expressing frustration. As verification became increasingly important across mortgage lending, tenant screening, financial services and employment screening, they felt constrained by legacy solutions and limited trustworthy alternatives and wanted our help. We also saw this as an opportunity to help broaden financial access for consumers by creating a more modern, complete picture of their financial health. We recognized the road ahead would not be easy, but few things worth pursuing are. In 2021, we responded to this market demand by launching Experian Verify, designed from day one to give the industry a secure, automated alternative to verify income and employment in real time. Today, that journey reaches an important new milestone as we announce a new integration with Workday, the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT. By partnering with Workday, we’re significantly expanding the real-time income and employment information that can be accessed through Experian Verify™. The integration comes as we continue to expand the Experian Verify network through a combination of payroll provider integrations and employer-direct connections, with a path to more than 80 million records, representing over half of U.S. payroll employees.[1] Why does this matter? There are moments when speed and simplicity matter more than others. Right now, across mortgage lending, tenant screening, financial services and employment screening, organizations continue to navigate affordability challenges, evolving market conditions and increasing pressure to deliver faster, more efficient experiences for consumers. At the same time, behind every verification request is a person trying to move forward. Buying a home. Financing a car. Leasing an apartment. Starting a new job. Every request for documentation or manual verification process creates friction during some of life's biggest financial moments. By expanding access to real-time income and employment data, millions more consumers can move through these moments with less paperwork, faster decisions and a better overall experience. Not only that, when verified income and employment information is available instantly, businesses can reduce reliance on manual verification processes that often require additional documentation, slow down HR teams and delay approvals. Ultimately, it means the system can move better, faster and smarter. For everyone. Created a more connected verification ecosystem This collaboration with Workday also shows what's possible when organizations are willing to challenge conventions and work together to solve problems in new ways. By integrating with Experian Verify, Workday customers will gain greater choice and flexibility in how they fulfill employment and income verification requests. There is tremendous opportunity to continue expanding access to trusted verification data to simplify experiences for consumers and businesses and create even more choice across our industry. Workday's commitment to helping create a more connected verification ecosystem is something I deeply admire, and I hope this milestone encourages others across our industry to think similarly. Meaningful progress happens when organizations listen, challenge conventions and build together. As we said when we launched Experian Verify, we entered this space with a long-term commitment to employers and the broader verification ecosystem. We knew meaningful change wouldn't happen overnight. We’ve made significant progress, and while the journey is far from over, each milestone reinforces our commitment to building partnerships that expand choice, improve access, and deliver greater innovation to the market. To learn more about our new integration with Workday please visit: https://www.experianplc.com/newsroom/workday [1] According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total nonfarm payroll employment was approximately 159.1 million in August 2026: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm