Innovation

We are excited to share that Experian is proudly supporting MIT’s Solve initiative, which is focused on helping to solve global challenges. We are committing up to $100,000 for the Good Jobs & Inclusive Entrepreneurship and Learning for Girls & Women challenges. Each promotes the financial health of workers, businesses, and communities affected by COVID-19.   At Experian, we feel it is our responsibility to help create a better future for the societies where we work. Today, communities, businesses, and individuals are being confronted with difficult challenges because of COVID-19. We are developing solutions to some of the financial problems that are being faced due to the pandemic. Our key focus is helping people improve their financial health and get better credit, which will help them secure essential services and achieve their goals of owning a home, starting a business, or reaching other ambitions. Some of our accomplishments include Experian Boost having already been used by more than 4 million Americans to try and boost their credit scores; our social innovation programs, focused on delivering societal benefits, which have reached 14 million people; and our employee volunteerism – with employees volunteering 54,000 hours to provide support to people through our financial education and community programs.  Through Experian’s Social Innovation funding program, we develop innovative products that aim to offer societal benefits. Our dedication to social innovation will be on display as we support MIT’s Solve Challenge, which focuses on innovation in the social impact space. This competition is open to tech-based entrepreneurs across the globe and is focused on developing solutions to create lasting change.    Each year, MIT receives thousands of applicants for this program. Our challenge is specifically related to solving financial health issues which have arisen for consumer groups as a result of COVID-19. We will be splitting the $100,000 prize money to accelerate up to four ideas into market, and we will also provide other assistance such as our in-house expertise and resources. This will include mentoring and potentially data or analytics to support the delivery of the most innovative solutions.   Innovation is at the core of this challenge, which is a key focus at Experian. We have been frequently recognised as one of the most innovative companies in the world and feel that our mission and vision will help make this initiative successful. Our people, data, and analytics will support the delivery of the most innovative solutions that are meeting the challenges in today’s challenging landscape.  We are proud to be part of MIT’s Solve Challenge and look forward to working with the winners to help create solutions for those most in need.  

Many of us have turned to streaming services to help us cope during this time of COVID-19. Being able to escape with some good entertainment while still maintaining our social distance is invaluable right now. Television streaming has skyrocketed 85% since March; I’ve certainly contributed to that increase. Now, subscribing to that streaming service can do more than entertain, it can improve a consumer’s financial health. Starting today, Netflix® customers can possibly improve their FICO® Score by adding their positive payment history through Experian Boost. Experian Boost™† is the innovation we launched in 2019 that can help consumers improve their credit score instantly. So far, approximately four million consumers have connected their utility and telecom bills to Experian Boost, leading to more than 29 million points added to FICO® Scores nationwide. This addition makes sense. Experian Boost already allows consumers to receive credit for paying their cable bills, so paying for a video streaming service on time should also help prove creditworthiness. It’s critical that we meet consumers where they are and adapt to help them in their current position, especially during a pandemic. Anticipating and prioritizing consumer needs is our focus and drives our innovation. After all, we’re consumers too. I’m proud of how our team uses their personal experience and their roles at Experian to create opportunity for millions of people to improve their financial health, especially during these uncertain times. Our job is to help consumers, and that doesn’t stop with their credit score. That’s why we’re also launching new free features available to everyone within the CreditWorks Basic and Premium products. The free tools provide personal insights and resources that can help consumers better save money and manage their financial profile. For more information about Experian Boost go to: www.experian.com/Boost. Experian and the Experian trademarks used herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Experian and its affiliates. The use of any other trade name, copyright, or trademark is for identification and reference purposes only and does not imply any association with the copyright or trademark holder of their product or brand. Other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. †Results may vary. Some may not see improved scores or approval odds. Not all lenders use Experian credit files, and not all lenders use scores impacted by Experian Boost. Credit score calculated based on FICO® Score 8 model. Your lender or insurer may use a different FICO® Score than FICO® Score 8, or another type of credit score altogether. Learn more.

We sit in a pivotal position in the societies where we work. For us at Experian, using our data and expertise to create a better tomorrow is more than an opportunity. It’s a responsibility. We are pleased to announce we have published our annual Sustainable Business Report 2020, which outlines Experian’s dedication to social and environmental issues and details our corporate responsibility performance. In the report, we also highlight Experian’s target to reach 100 million additional people globally by 2025 with social innovation products and services. Additionally, the Sustainable Business Report focuses on our ambition to become carbon neutral by 2030. By utilizing renewable energy, reducing the carbon impact of business travel, and investing in high-quality carbon offsets, we reduced our carbon footprint by 8% last year and cut the carbon intensity of our business by 14% per $1,000 of revenue compared with the previous year. Additionally, 29% of Experian’s worldwide energy was also renewable. We are excited to share a few key takeaways from this year’s Sustainable Business Report: Experian employees volunteered 54,500 hours in and outside of work time to support their communities. This included over 3,500 hours in March 2020 to support communities as the COVID-19 crisis took hold. In Brazil, we have supported the introduction of new legislation enabling millions of consumers to benefit from the use of ‘positive’ data about the credit and other bills they pay on time. Experian Boost helped over 1.5 million Americans improve their credit scores, collectively boosting their FICO® scores by more than 17 million points. Prove ID-Link helped 7.5 million people in India prove their identity. As a result, more people are able to open a bank account and access credit for the first time. Learn more by viewing or downloading our full Sustainable Business Report here.

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.  

At Experian, we’re dedicated to innovation and the COVID-19 pandemic has been an impetus for further innovation. Our driving force of successful innovation is our employees. We foster a culture of continuous innovation, from the way we work to the solutions we create.   Global Hackathon  As part of our effort to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, we’re launching Experian’s first-ever Global Hackathon. Taking place between June 1 and 5, we’ve invited all our employees to get involved and connect, share knowledge and find new ways to help our clients and consumers on the road to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.    Mitigating COVID-19 Crisis Through Our Innovations  In addition to the Global Hackathon, we’ve committed vast resources to develop innovative technologies and new sources of data and analytics to drive solutions that help people, businesses and society at large.   For example, to aid in the United States re-opening efforts, Experian has made available a free interactive U.S. map showing populations at-risk of being most susceptible to developing severe cases of COVID-19. The Experian COVID-19 Outlook and Response Evaluator (CORE) tool is intended to help guide healthcare organizations and government agencies as they plan for COVID-19 recovery in the months ahead. The map leverages de-identified data such as pre-existing conditions and social determinants of health to form a comprehensive picture that predicts possible pandemic impact on communities.   To help essential organizations during the pandemic, Experian also created At-Risk Audiences, which leverage our data assets to identify groups of individuals that are most likely to be impacted. These new privacy-compliant segments, offered free of charge, are designed to help these organizations find and communicate with at-risk populations, enabling them to deliver essential services as quickly as possible.  In the UK, we’re working side-by-side with the government. As part of this, we’re building models to help predict how this disease will spread in local populations and predict the effectiveness of various treatment therapies.      In Brazil, we’ve organized a coalition of universities, data companies and technology leaders to launch  Covid Radar with the purpose of working together to minimize the impacts generated by the COVID-19 pandemic and contribute to the recovery of Brazil’s economy. The Covid Radar integrates companies to the hospitals and communities that need donations of ventilators, personal protection equipment, or other supplies.  In addition to providing case monitoring and disease forecasting.   The COVID-19 crisis has forced innovation and change on a scale and pace we wouldn’t normally see. We remain relentlessly focused on helping vulnerable communities, strengthening the resilience of businesses, and playing an important role in helping consumers and the world economy get back to strength. As part of our global innovation program, we’re hosting a global hackathon to help our employees create new ways to help our clients and consumers on the road to recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.  As one of the world’s most innovative companies, we’re doing everything at Experian we can to provide our unique insights back to key stakeholders so they can prioritize help those who need it most urgently.     

Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy, generating 44% of the nation’s overall revenue. When they take a hit, we all feel it. But as good neighbors – and frequent patrons – we can find a path toward keeping these small businesses on their feet and reopening their doors as soon as possible.    At Experian, our obligation is to fight for small businesses that have been impacted by COVID-19. Main Street America reported in April that “COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on small businesses’ revenue…Approximately 35.7 million Americans employed by small businesses are at risk of unemployment as result of the COVID-19 crisis.”   That is why we moved quickly to support the signing of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), providing relief to Americans through expanded unemployment coverage and by distributing grants and loans to small businesses.   Acknowledging the unprecedented financial difficulties many are facing, lenders have established relief options for customers unable to make scheduled payments. In an effort to safeguard consumers against potential delinquency and protect credit, the CARES Act calls for creditors to adjust reporting systems for those taking advantage of these relief options.   Simply put, your small business’s credit score shouldn’t be your biggest concern these days, and the CARES Act works to ensure that.    We know there’s more work to be done to help small businesses navigate these challenging times. We’ve outlined the following steps to keep your business’s credit on track during the pandemic, taking advantage of resources and services we recently launched:  Call Your Lender: If a customer or small business is unable to pay a bill, the most critical action they can take is to call their lender and inquire about available assistance programs. If consumers are able to get an accommodation, they can stop a missed payment from negatively impacting their credit.  Business Resources Website: Experian has launched a website to help businesses prepare to manage increased attacks, push toward digital banking and understand regulatory changes as businesses find their footing in this evolving financial services landscape.     Credit Report Access for All: Experian is offering all consumers access to a free credit report, FICO score and credit monitoring through our CreditWorks product, which also provides access to Experian Boost, a financial tool that has helped more than 2 million consumers increase their credit score to date. This is in addition to the free weekly credit score we are offering in coordination with our peers through annualcrediteport.com.   COVID-19 U.S. Business Risk Index: Experian has launched a new service to help lenders and government organizations understand how to make lending options available to the business segments that need it most. This, in turn, directly helps small businesses gain access to capital they need. The public tool includes a risk simulator broken down by state to keep business owners updated on how COVID-19 is affecting specific industries in a particular region.  As a nation, we have learned many lessons from the 2008 financial crisis. One vital lesson that sticks with us at Experian is that we’re better at tackling challenges as a collective financial industry, with transparency and a lending hand. At Experian, we’re committed to helping small businesses land back on their feet, and we’ll be there when the backbone of our economy needs additional support down the road.   

To combat a growing threat that’s expected to drive $48 billion in annual online payment fraud losses by 20231,  Experian®  has announced the launch of Sure Profile™. Experian is the first company with an offering to combat synthetic identity fraud that is integrated into the credit profile with market-leading assurance. We are proud to be the first in our industry to actually put “skin-in-the-game” by sharing in fraud losses with our clients if the losses occur on assured profiles.  Experian’s new offering validates consumer identities, detects profiles that have an increased risk for synthetic identity fraud and helps cover losses resulting from synthetic identity fraud for assured profiles.   Leveraging the capabilities of the Experian Ascend Identity Platform™, Sure Profile utilizes Experian’s industry-leading data assets and data quality to drive advanced analytics that set a higher level of protection for lenders. Powered by newly developed machine learning and AI models, Sure Profile offers lenders a streamlined approach to define and detect synthetic identities early in the originations process.   Experian’s Sure Profile differentiates between real people and potentially risky applicants, so lenders can confidently increase application approvals with less risk.    We expect to authenticate most credit applications through Sure Profile. In the cases where the identity can’t be assured, the company will deliver additional fraud risk indicators, so that lenders can take the right next steps to verify the potential borrower’s identity and prevent fraud.  To date, detecting synthetic identities has been a significant challenge for lenders because there’s not an industry standard or a single definition that can be used to establish the legitimacy of an identity. In addition, understanding the financial impact of synthetics has been difficult for lenders as losses tied to synthetic identity fraud are typically categorized as defaults or “bad debt.” With Sure Profile, we are reinforcing our position as a leader by creating a standard set of criteria to define a synthetic identity.   Experian has always been a leader in combatting fraud, and with Sure Profile, we’re proud to deliver an industry-first fraud offering integrated into the credit profile that mitigates lender losses while protecting millions of consumers’ identities. Our investments in innovation, AI and machine learning and our data quality are enabling us to lead the way in identity protection and help protect consumers and lenders alike. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt lives across the globe, fraudsters continue to take advantage of the vulnerable situation. The opportunistic nature of fraudsters means that times of crisis and pandemics open up additional breeding grounds for fraud and identity theft. Our latest CrossCore® release has never been more relevant for businesses than right now. Confidently recognizing consumers and safeguarding digital transactions is always a difficult balance – but now more critical than ever. With CrossCore, businesses can limit fraud losses and reduce unnecessary customer friction, at a time when safe and convenient access to financial services is essential.  This new version of CrossCore, our integrated digital identity and fraud risk platform, combines risk-based authentication, identity proofing, and fraud detection into a single, cloud-based platform. This means that businesses have the capabilities and technology they need to rapidly respond to an ever-changing environment. With flexible decisioning orchestration, advanced analytics, and pre-integrated identity and fraud services, businesses can make real-time risk decisions throughout the customer lifecycle. And they can do all of this through simple self-service.  We know there’s no silver bullet when it comes to fighting fraud, which is why we continue to develop our curated partner ecosystem. This gives companies access to all the technology and capabilities they need, in one place – whether it be Experian’s, our partners’, or their own. We combine this with advanced analytics and our own rich data assets plus a built-in strategy design and enhanced workflow giving fraud and compliance teams more control to adjust strategies based on evolving threats. This helps improve efficiency and reduce operational costs.   Updates to the new version include the ability for clients to submit dynamic API request payloads, apply progressive risk assessments, apply parallel logic, enable self-service workflow configurations, and provide an online business intelligence (BI) module to view transactional volume reports. These updates will give CrossCore users a simpler way to manage complex orchestration; faster more scalable performance; and key performance indicators in near real-time, all while enabling a personalized and seamless experience for their true customers.   More than 250 clients worldwide use CrossCore today, including capabilities from our third-party partners. To start leveraging best-in-class, pre-integrated identity and fraud services through simple self-service learn more about the Experian CrossCore platform.