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October marked Black History Month (UK) – a celebration of the culture, heritage and achievements of Black people past and present. Although we weren’t able to celebrate in person this year, our Black at Experian employee network were still able to serve up an incredible range of inspiring webinars, videos, articles and podcasts covering topics discussing Black British culture, ways to discuss race and racism with our children, as well as the importance of being an ally. This exciting schedule of activities has been the perfect opportunity to learn more and many of us were personally touched by the stories of our Black colleagues who have openly and courageously shared their thoughts and experiences with us all. But as Black History Month comes to an end for another year, it’s essential that our support doesn’t stop here. As an organisation, we are committed to promoting equality and diversity for all. And our Black at Experian network has already been instrumental in helping us understand how we can improve in some of these areas. Part of this includes signing the Business in the Community (BITC) ‘Race at Work Charter’. By working alongside BITC, as well as our other employee networks, it's helping us create initiatives that will continue to drive positive change and inclusion for all. We are committed more than ever to leverage our differences as individuals and use this broad range of talents to develop our competitive advantage as a business. We’ve made good progress in a short space of time, but this is just the beginning. We are looking forward to continuing this important journey in building a workplace that embraces a more diverse and inclusive culture.

02 November 2020 is a day we’re really proud of at Experian – our Danish Credit Bureau turns 150 years old!    As we prepared to celebrate this milestone with our people, our customers and all our wider stakeholders, we delved into our archives.  We found extraordinary pieces of our history that still resonate with us, with how we do business, today.  On this historic day, it’s my pleasure to share some of these here.   In 1783, a Danish merchant wrote a polite request to a potential customer who was asking for credit to provide information about their circumstances rather than their “Happiness and Piousness”.  It’s the earliest example we have of a credit check.  Businesses still need that information today, and it’s a demand Experian helps meet globally every day.     Købmandstandens Oplysningsbureau, or KOB, is a name that still appears on Experian products.  Evidence of not only offering data and information services that meet businesses and consumers’ needs, but being a trusted provider of accurate data and information.  We continue to publish a quarterly analysis of start-ups across industries in the Nordics, which started when we first printed a solvency book in 1930.    In 1928, KOB had a woman on its Board of Directors.  Mrs M C Gazette served alongside three men, and during her tenure created the Gazette Fund, a hardship fund to which employees could apply in times of need.  The fund ran until 2016, when it moved to a different structure for fiscal reasons.    In 1938, the German Information Agencies demanded the names of Danish businessmen of Jewish descent be given to them.  We uncovered a news article from 1945 showing our Chairman rejected this demand, safeguarding the trust those consumers placed in our business, and morally doing the right thing.    Both actions by former Board members exemplify principles we continue to hold dear at Experian today.  Operating in the Experian way, we safeguard the information we hold, we embrace diversity, are inclusive, and strive to ensure all our people feel free to bring their whole and unique self to work at our Company, contributing to our high performance culture.  What is clear from these examples and others in this celebratory digital storybook published today, is data has been at the heart of all we do for 150 years, and it will continue to be in future.  From the early days, when we helped Danish businesses assess creditworthiness of their customers, through to today, we’re still empowering businesses and consumers to manage their data with confidence.    We’re grateful for the many years our customers have trusted us to provide them with data and insights that help their businesses to thrive.    We’re proud of our employees in the past, and those we have with us today.  As a team, we work daily to value each other, safeguard our future and delight our customers.     It has been an exciting journey, and we have only just begun. We are investing in the future, through new technology, talented people and innovative solutions that power opportunities that create a better tomorrow for our employees, our customers, consumers and the communities in which we operate.   We’re celebrating today, and we’re excited about the opportunities ahead of us too.   

There are many responsibilities I carry as CEO of Experian North America. All of them critical in terms of client relationships, product offerings, innovation, culture, our people and our purpose. A part of my work that I'm extremely passionate about is how we make a difference to consumers and their financial health. As leading data and technology company – and the world’s largest credit bureau – we have the opportunity to work with organizations and individuals every day to help them achieve their financial goals. And while that is good for business, it is also good for society and consumers. That is why I am pleased to join the HOPE Global Forum and John Hope Bryant to announce our new partnership. Operation HOPE is a national nonprofit with goals that align with our own at Experian: to uplift disenfranchised youth and adults from poverty to thriving in a credit ecosystem. We are committed to helping vulnerable communities with our data, analytics, products and services and working with Operation HOPE will help us further that mission. One way we have already been doing that is through products like Experian Boost, designed to drive financial inclusion and help people get fair and affordable access to credit. I have seen firsthand how these actions can change people’s lives. Let me tell you about an Experian Boost customer named Lawrence. Last spring, in March of 2019, his credit score was 640. He was already enrolled in our credit monitoring services, but was not proactive in trying to improve his credit score. Then, he tried Experian Boost. He was able to show positive payment history for utilities, cable, and his cell phone bills. Instantly, his score jumped 30 points. Following the advice of our credit education resources, he paid down his credit cards, which propelled his score even higher. He now has a credit score of 770. What does this mean for Lawrence and his family? Previously, they owned one car and paid 18% interest on that loan. Now, the family has two cars, and they pay 5% and 8.2% on two car loans. This represents incredible savings the family can now use for other needs, and increased access to financial services that can help them achieve other goals. This is what we mean when we talk about empowering consumers so they can have financial freedom. For some, this means the ability to purchase a car, have a credit card, own a home, or simply just save money. The financial health journey can start at any time and have a lifetime impact. I am really excited about this partnership. Together we have the potential to make a tangible difference in financial inclusion in the United States, combining Operation HOPE’s education and counseling programs with our credit education knowledge, capability and services like Experian Boost.  

At Experian, we are committed to educating consumers about how to manage their credit histories and protect their financial health. At the same time, we know the COVID-19 pandemic has created a difficult economic reality for millions of Americans. In response, many people have questions about how to protect themselves financially, including their credit histories and scores. To address these questions, we partnered with pro football legend and American Ninja Warrior host Akbar Gbajabiamila to educate consumers across the country about steps they can take to protect their financial health and their credit standing. Gbajabiamila, author of “Everyone Can be a Ninja,” is passionate about helping people develop a financial game plan and he understands having a good credit history is a key component of good financial health. These interviews provided a platform for Gbajabiamila to share the four-point financial fitness game plan consumers can use protect and improve their financial health during the pandemic, including: Contacting your lenders as soon as possible if you think you may miss a payment. Many lenders provide emergency support, which can help protect your credit standing. Getting credit for paying cable, satellite, internet, Netflix and utility bills on time with Experian Boost Exploring balance transfer options or other introductory credit offers through Experian Credit Match Checking your credit report regularly. It’s free once a week at AnnualCreditReport.com. Tune in to Gbajabiamila’s interview with NBC Washington and hear his message to consumers in the videos below. For more credit education resources and tools: Join Experian’s #CreditChat hosted by @Experian on Twitter with financial experts every Wednesday at 3 p.m. Eastern time Visit the Ask Experian blog for answers to common questions, advice and education about credit For additional resources visit www.experian.com/coronavirus

Today’s customer needs are ever-evolving and businesses both large and small are reshaping the customer journey at an unprecedented pace. Businesses are looking for solutions that are secure, easily scalable to meet emerging needs and changes in demand, and seamlessly upgrade to avoid getting stuck on outdated software. To enable organisations to keep up with the pace of change, Experian has developed a new set of cloud-based solutions designed for companies that seek to automate decisions across an increasingly complex customer journey. The new release includes both pre-configured solutions for organizations that prefer standard ‘out-of-the-box’ applications and highly configurable solutions for clients with sophisticated, decision-driven business processes. We want to offer more businesses access to Experian’s award-winning decisioning platform. Pre-configured SaaS solutions bring Experian’s rich data, analytics, decisioning capabilities, and expertise in credit risk to new markets, while we are able to continue to serve our largest enterprise clients with a full range of decisioning capabilities. With both options, businesses can benefit from the entire PowerCurve platform or select custom capabilities that address specific needs. PowerCurve solutions available on the cloud include: PowerCurve Customer Acquisition – an ‘out-of-the-box’ solution designed to help businesses quickly acquire high-value customers. PowerCurve Eligibility Check – an ‘out-of-the-box’ solution designed to help lenders automatically assess which prospects are the right fit for their credit products. PowerCurve Strategy Management – a highly customizable cloud-based solution that helps businesses drive higher performance with more insightful and dynamic decisions. PowerCurve Originations - a highly customizable cloud-based solution that helps businesses acquire more profitable customers through adaptive and targeted approaches. PowerCurve, which is used by 2,000 companies across the globe, is a platform to help businesses make analytically driven decisions and adopt the most effective decision management strategies across the entire Customer Life Cycle. Highly configurable PowerCurve solutions are available on the cloud in all regions and cloud-based; pre-configured solutions vary by market.  

This blog is written by Rachel Duncan, HR Director, at Experian. At Experian, we encourage our employees to bring their whole selves to work and have created a culture of inclusion that helps to fuel our continued product innovation. We understand the incredible value in having a truly diverse workforce and this means removing barriers and working through challenges we all may face in and outside the workplace.   That’s why we are proud to be supporting Stonewall’s ‘Trans Rights Are Human Rights’ campaign today to help reform the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) 2004. We believe that all trans people should be protected and supported with legal and policy framework that enables them to live with dignity, privacy and respect, free from fear, isolation and discrimination.  The GRA was introduced in 2004 to allow trans people to apply for legal recognition of gender in which they live. However, the process in doing so is expensive, intrusive and takes a very long time. To apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), which allows someone to legally change their gender, the individual will have to overcome many psychological challenges and it can be very emotionally taxing.  It’s estimated that just 12% of trans people have a GRC, despite 92% of trans people stating in the National LGBT Survey (2018) that they would be interested in getting one. GRA reform is therefore a key step in allowing legal gender recognition to become accessible to this marginalised community.   The reform requests the removal of having to disclose a psychiatric report or proof of diagnosis in order to obtain legal recognition. It moves to allow trans people the human right to decide their gender for themselves and protect all trans and non-binary people’s rights to privacy and to family life.  As well as this, non-binary people should be able to legally change their gender to reflect who they are including amending their birth certificate to reflect this.  The reform should also include the removal of the spousal veto. This veto allows for the spouse of a trans person the decision as to whether they can change their gender and gives control over to someone who may not have their best interests at heart.  We are fully committed in ensuring LGBTQ inclusion which means, as well as evolving our own internal policies and practices, we must also contribute to external debates that campaign for equality.  Our Experian Pride network has been instrumental in helping us drive change throughout the business, whilst also educating and raising awareness amongst our colleagues about the LGBTQ community. This includes supporting a collaboration with Stonewall and our HR teams to create our new ‘Transitioning at Work’ policy, along with raising money for transgender charity, Mermaids.   Experian is part of a growing group of leading businesses who have joined forces to support trans equality, so we hope that together we can make a real difference to the lives of trans people across the UK. See our interview with Lewis Hayden, Service Desk Specialist and Experian Pride Network Member.

We are delighted to have completed the acquisition of a 60% stake in Arvato Financial Solutions Risk Management Division (AFS RM), expanding our presence in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (DACH) and bringing Germany’s second largest credit bureau into Experian.  It is an incredibly exciting moment for us both and marks a significant step forward in Experian EMEA’s growth ambitions.        Together, we form a powerful new partnership in Europe’s economic powerhouse. With AFS RM’s local expertise and sector knowledge of industries like e-commerce, telecoms and insurance, and our global experience and innovation in data, analytics, software, and technology platforms, we will redefine what’s possible for our customers.     AFS RM brings market presence with high-quality risk, fraud and identity management products and solutions tailored for key industries.   We bring scale, expertise, and innovative products like Experian One and Ascend Analytics on Demand.  Together, we will offer the best new technologies into these markets, delivering broad coverage and innovation that enables existing and new customers to make better, faster decisions, ultimately delivering greater access to finance for people across the region.     Our new partnership will be branded Experian, which is just one of the ways we’re welcoming AFS RM to the Experian family.  I’m delighted it will be led by Kai Kalchthaler as CEO, Experian DACH, who will ensure we help businesses find and fulfill their potential, so they can go further with us.  Watch how we’re redefining possible, today, tomorrow, together here.     

Juniper Research released their Online Payment Fraud 2020-2024 report in May highlighting key trends in digital fraud, it’s implications on businesses and consumers as well as a competitive analysis for advanced solutions available to secure digital payments. Experian is proud to have contributed to the research and its CrossCore solution considered on their Fraud Detection & Prevention Leaderboard. Key takeaways: We’re in the middle of a payment revolution with mobile payments on the rise. Nearly half the world will be using digital wallets by 2024, with transaction values to increase by almost 60% to over $9 trillion in 2024. Omnichannel expectations are creating new challenges for online payments as new technologies for creating convenience are being exploited by cybercriminals, but it’s preventable. Juniper Research forecasts a $25.5 billion eCommerce transaction fraud loss in 2019, a 17% increase in 2018. By 2024, this will double to almost $50.5 billion. The Fraud Detection & Prevention Leaderboard is an assessment based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures but not considered a ranking or exhaustive list of solutions on the market. Experian’s flagship solution, CrossCore, just released its latest advanced features and offers unique functionality that lives up to its layered approach for mitigating fraud and authenticating customers. CrossCore is an integrated digital identity and fraud risk platform that combines rich data assets from Experian with identity insights and capabilities from its curated partner ecosystem. Through sophisticated orchestration, it applies advanced analytics to give businesses confidence in every transaction. CrossCore combines risk-based authentication, identity proofing, and fraud detection into a single cloud platform to make real-time risk decisions throughout the customer lifecycle. The platform is designed to help clients differentiate between their good and bad customers, without disrupting good customers, or increasing customer friction in their attempts to stop fraud. Key profile features: Our partner network, some of which we don’t publicly disclose, cover a variety of categories including, behavioural biometrics (Biocatch), traditional biometrics (Daon), document verification (Mitek, Acuant, Onfido), call centre risk assessments (TrustID, NextCaller), email verification (Emailage), Alternative Data (Ekata, Global Data Consortium, HelloSoda, Pipl), Mobile Phone Verification (Boku/Danal) and Chargeback Management (Chargebacks911). Customers include banks, eCommerce merchants and retail companies, telecommunications providers, travel providers, health providers, insurance companies, and public sector organizations. Advanced Decisioning: CrossCore is designed to leverage the complete raw output in our partner network to perform advanced analytics via Experian’s native machine learning infrastructure. This approach includes a hybrid of Unsupervised models (to generate features), Supervised generic or custom models per use case, and a business rules infrastructure. This provides high levels of accuracy to the client, leading to significantly reduced friction and operational costs. Find out how Experian’s capabilities compare and hear from our experts on how to balance security with convenient customer experiences.  

Experian, the global information services company, has agreed to join FDATA in support of its Open Banking initiatives around the world.  The commitment includes membership in the UK, US, and EMEA. It reflects Experian's strategy for rolling out Open Banking services across its global footprint that includes South America, South East Asia including Australia and South Africa.   Access to Open Banking will complement the organisation's network of credit bureaux, identity verification, and automated decision services that it already provides to consumers and businesses. Open Banking enables Experian to provide additional insight into consumers' and businesses' financial wellbeing.  Lisa Fretwell, Managing Director of Data Services at Experian, said: "Joining FDATA helps us to exchange knowledge, thought leadership, and drive innovation at a time when we are increasing our strategic commitment and investment plans for Open Banking. This will also include the UK's Open Finance initiative."  Experian helps consumers and businesses to engage with and understand their finance through combining its bureau data with insights generated from Open Banking.   Its consumer services business engages with more than 7 million consumers in the UK and more than 30 million in the U.S, empowering people to manage their money and access services at the best available rates. Meanwhile, Experian also works with a range of businesses – from financial services to utilities, and insurance to the public sector – so is well placed to drive successful Open Banking initiatives.  Working with FDATA and its members will further improve Experian's prospects of encouraging governments and regulators to commit to delivering the highest possible standards in Open Banking.   "Our membership will help us gain insights into policy issues that affect Open Banking and drive initiatives so consumers and businesses can gain greater access to fair and affordable credit," said Paul Haddon, Vice President of Governance & Strategic Initiatives. "Our launch of adding consumer-permissioned data to Experian credit reports called Experian Boost is a great example of how we are innovating and improving financial access for millions of people."  Launched in 2019, Experian Boost allows consumers to add positive payment history for telecommunications and utility bills to their Experian credit reports, which can possibly increase their credit scores instantly.   Gavin Littlejohn, FDATA Global Chair, added, "FDATA is delighted at Experian's decision to broaden the scope of their membership, a strategy that aligns a significant global footprint with FDATA's ongoing expansion and engagement in multiple markets. A first step in the journey towards Open Finance, Open Banking is undergoing international proliferation. FDATA shapes and influences this dialogue at the earliest possible stages for the good of the consumer and the health of the ecosystem, providing invaluable insights from across market landscapes with regard to delivery and holding markets accountable for ongoing performance. These efforts rest on the pillars of rich, living repositories of comprehensive research, white papers and opinion pieces and, a proven history of successful lobbying and intervention on behalf of the membership.  The addition of Experian's voice to the FDATA membership extends the collaborative capability of the combined membership, enhancing the synergy between the members themselves. The unprecedented economic crisis brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a surge of innovative responses from the Fintech community throughout the global ecosystem. FDATA is uniquely placed to facilitate these conversations between industry, governments, and regulators, encouraging the potential of products and services to yield the best possible outcomes for SMEs and populations as a whole."