Innovation

Bloor Research recently named Experian a Champion in the latest Data Quality Market Update 2022. Bloor’s Market Update specifically provides individuals with a technology update and ranking of vendors based on their products and progress in the market. Experian was the only vendor placed in the Champion category. Data quality is the foundation for any data-driven organization. However, many organizations still struggle to achieve the needed quality data necessary to feed critical initiatives. In our most recent research report, we discovered that 85% of businesses believe poor quality contact data for customers negatively impacts their operational processes and efficiency. To solve these challenges, data quality solutions continue to evolve. Leveraging trustworthy data equips organizations with the power to make their data actionable and fit for a purpose. Our research also showed:  89% say that implementing data quality best practices has improved their business agility 87% believe that data quality is fundamental to the core of business operations 91% say investing in data quality has positively impacted business growth  In effect, this empowers business leaders to make better and faster decisions when outlining key operational strategies and initiatives. Since three quarters of businesses who have improved their data quality in the last year say they have exceeded their goals in some manner, we find that organizations that emphasize data maturity are more likely to experience success. Experian has a long history in the data quality space, starting with our address validation solutions. However, as data usage has evolved, so have our solutions. We incorporate cutting edge technology paired with an easy-to-use interface that allows individuals at all levels of the business to better understand the quality of their data and improve this important asset. A high degree of automation and precision will be required as businesses tackle today’s challenges related to data quality. At Experian, the overarching goal is to help clients maximize their potential with the power and confidence supplied by superior quality data—the cornerstone of success in today’s digital-forward realm of business operations.   Explore our data quality solutions today to find out for yourself what makes us data quality experts. Click here to start your free trial.

I recently came across a quote that said, “The world you see is created by what you focus on.” As I look back on my last 16 years with Experian, I see a lot of truth in this. While Experian has historically been recognized as a business-to-business organization, over the last several years, we’ve had a transformational shift in focus that’s fundamentally changed our business. This shift has made our world look a lot different than it used to. Today, consumers are at the center of everything we do. They’re the driving force behind our innovation and growth. Every day, millions of consumers come to Experian looking for ways to improve their financial health and we’ve been building one of the largest global member bases. These direct relationships put us in a unique position. We can listen to consumers to hone our focus – and we do. Just like in everyday relationships, listening builds trust and respect. It helps us understand what consumers want and allows us to innovate to meet them where they are on their financial journey. In 2019, we heard consumers’ call for more control of their data and responded with Experian Boost®[1]– a first-of-its-kind feature that allows consumers to contribute information directly to their Experian credit file. To date, we’ve helped 8.6 million consumers instantly improve their FICO® Scores[2] with an average increase of 13 points. Since launch, we’ve continued to listen and enhance the feature to maximize the number of consumers who can benefit. Shortly after we brought Experian Boost to market, we wanted to ensure consumers who paid their monthly telecom and utility bills from their savings or credit cards could benefit alongside those who paid these reoccurring bills through their checking account, and we did. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when television streaming had skyrocketed, we wanted to ensure consumers who subscribed to video streaming services, including Netflix®, Hulu™, HBO Max™, Disney+™ and others, could use these monthly payments to build their credit histories, and we did. We regularly connect new streaming service partners to Experian Boost. Most recently, consumers who subscribe to Paramount+, Peacock, Showtime® and ESPN+ can also contribute their on-time bill payments directly to their Experian credit file through Experian Boost. Earlier this year we introduced Experian Go™ - a free, first-of-its-kind program to help “credit invisibles,” or people with no credit history, begin building credit. Within minutes, credit invisibles who enroll in the program can have an authenticated Experian credit report, tradelines and a credit history by using Experian Boost and instant access to financial offers through Experian Go. Since launch, more than 84,000 consumers have established an Experian credit report through Experian Go and become visible to potential lenders. As a next step, today we’ve announced a new beta release of Experian Boost that allows consumers to contribute qualifying, “positive” residential rent payments directly to their Experian credit file.  This capability makes Experian Boost the only feature that can instantly improve a consumer’s FICO® Score 8through positive rent payments at no cost. This is the next step in our commitment to helping consumers get the credit they deserve. With the beta release, consumers who rent from over 1,500 of some of the largest U.S.-based property management companies, and who pay their rent directly to their property management company or through platforms like AppFolio Property Management, Buildium®, Yardi® Breeze and Zillow® Rental Manager, can add qualifying positive rent payments to their Experian credit file through Experian Boost. Based on preliminary analysis[3] highlighting the potential impact of positive residential rent payment reporting through Experian Boost, we estimate 66% of consumers will see an instant increase to their FICO® Score 8, a FICO® Score 8 improvement of nearly 10 points on average for those who receive a boost and are new to using Experian Boost. And we’re not done yet. To ensure more renters can benefit, we’ll continue to add new property management companies over time. In later phases, we’ll update the feature further to add individual landlords and smaller property management companies over time. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and, as we look ahead, I’m excited for the ways we can help consumers that are yet to come. With our focus on consumers and our ability to listen and innovate, I believe we’ve just scratched the surface in terms of our capacity to help bring financial power to all.    [1] Results will vary. Not all payments are boost-eligible.  Some users may not receive an improved score or approval odds. Not all lenders use Experian credit files, and not all lenders use scores impacted by Experian Boost®. Learn more. [2] 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. [3] Analysis completed using FICO® Score 8 with Experian data. 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. Licenses and Disclosures.

As any online merchant knows, the past few years have seen a rapid increase in digital transactions but unfortunately, fraudsters have adapted quickly and taken advantage of this. With booming online sales, retailers strive to provide a seamless shopping experience while simultaneously recognizing legitimate customers and keeping an eye out for fraud. It’s a balancing act that becomes more perilous as transaction volumes grow. Perhaps one of the most frustrating challenges for online merchants is false declines. In fact, Aite-Novarica Group’s The E-Commerce Fraud Enigma: The Quest to Maximize Revenue While Minimizing Fraud Report found the average false decline rate is 1.16%. With over $960 billion in U.S. online sales in 2021, lost sales resulting from false declines is substantial, totaling more than $11 billion. False declines occur when a good customer is suspected of fraud and then prevented from completing a purchase. This happens when a company’s fraud prevention solution provides inadequate insight into the identity of the customer, flagging them as a potential bad actor. The result is a missed sale for the business and a frustrating transaction and experience for the customer. Merchants use a variety of tools to prevent fraud while ensuring they minimize friction during the purchase experience, but many legacy fraud solutions fail to provide the confidence needed to sufficiently assess the risk of the identity presented by the customer. As identities become more complex, Experian recognizes that identity is personal. We are committed to creating new and innovative solutions to manage this complexity, and to addressing the constantly evolving opportunities for fraud that come along with it. Our newest offering, Experian Link, is the most recent example. It allows merchants to augment their real-time payment risk decisions with a perspective that links customer identity to the credit card being presented for payment. Aite-Novarica’s report showed that nearly half of the e-commerce merchants surveyed are tolerating fraud rates between 20 and 49 basis points. Experian Link can improve that as it provides a positive match rate of 85% for major credit card brands, and when an identity is verified against a credit card, fraud rates can drop to as low as 10 basis points with no added customer friction. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, online merchants need the right tools to help them meet consumer expectations and support their growth now and in the future. Leveraging a strong identity verification solution like Experian Link in the authorization process will be critical for merchants, providing additional data that paints a more complete picture of their customer and leads to fewer false declines. For more information on how Experian Link helps businesses enhance their identity verification solutions, please visit https://www.experian.com/business/products/experian-link.

Consumers generate hundreds, if not thousands, of digital interactions every day when they do things like shop on the internet, play games, manage their finances or stream entertainment. As businesses look to differentiate their brands and create positive consumer experiences, they need to reconcile these data points. Proper reconciliation of identity leads to insightful data that helps augment the way brands market to consumers, manage risk, and deliver secure, personalized experiences. Fulfilling the promise of identity can be a challenge, though, given the massive volumes of data that these consumer interactions generate, and the need to ensure privacy-compliant use. To help companies meet this challenge, Experian introduced an integrated suite of identity solutions, products and services called Experian Identity. It combines Experian’s sophisticated information technology systems and vast accumulation of consumer data to enable businesses to engage with consumers on a more perceptive, personalized basis. This recent Global News Blog entry addresses this topic well. Experian Identity is an ideal choice for companies that need identity resolution and fraud management solutions to further strengthen their customer relationships. One example of the innovative use of identity data is how it can give people with limited-to-no credit history access to a variety of useful financial instruments. By incorporating expanded data sources that contain identity information, such as rent, utilities, telecom, and video streaming services, as well as buy now, pay later data into credit reports, consumers who are underrepresented in the current credit reporting system can provide a more comprehensive view into their ability and willingness to repay outstanding debt. Lastly, Experian Identity is laser-focused on compliance for consumer consent and control around identity. A recent advertorial in the news outlet AXIOS offers more background on how businesses can use identity data to stay relevant with their target audiences and create a positive and safe consumer experience. Click here to read more. For more information on how Experian Identity helps optimize identity solutions, visit www.experian.com/identity-solutions. To learn how making identities personal builds trust and helps organizations create improved experiences for consumers and businesses, download the Making Identities Personal white paper.

Back in October 2021, we announced our partnership with Code First Girls, who teach women to code for free and develops female talent in tech. We have shared their journey where four female students worked as paid interns with Experian while studying for their Code First Girls’ Nanodegree for the last nine months. My colleagues in the UK will be continuing the partnership with Code First Girls this year. As part of the partnership, Experian will be sponsoring four courses in Python and Data, and our employees are volunteering to co-lead these courses. Experian will also be sponsoring 10 Code First Girls’ Nanodegrees, with the aim of hiring these 10 graduates via our Software Engineering graduate programme in the UK. The four interns who recently completed their internships with us came from diverse backgrounds and introduced fresh perspectives. They've helped to drive our financial inclusion agenda by working on our United for Financial Health programme in South Africa and Italy, amongst other innovative projects. Watch the videos where our interns talked about their internship experience: Nicole Ngina, born, raised and currently in Kenya, and a recent diploma graduate of Strathmore University where she studied Business Information Technology. Betty Abate, originally from Ethiopia but grew up in the UK. Chelsi Goliath, a Computer Science student from South Africa. Kamile Sudziute, originally from Lithuania, but studied in London, where she just graduated from King’s College London with a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. We are committed to developing women in tech and I’m pleased to welcome more talented young women to start their careers in tech with us. This year’s extension of our partnership with Code First Girls enables us to create a better tomorrow for more women to kickstart their careers in tech. Stay tuned for more updates on our journey with Code First Girls by following us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

We welcome this week’s response by the UK Government in relation to its work on the new UK Data Strategy, and the commitment to creating a new UK Data Act.  Innovative data use has a crucial role to play as Britain takes its place on the global stage. Data has the ability to change people’s lives for the better. It can help build a stronger, smarter future, whether that is through existing products and services or by enabling new and innovative solutions to the problems people and society face today. We share the Government’s goal of using data to deliver better outcomes for people across the UK, and to supercharge its economic success.  Already today we see data doing great good in the world: it is enabling the deployment of resources from charities and Government where they are most needed; reducing the number of credit-invisible people and combatting loan sharks; preventing fraud and supporting those who fall victim to fraudsters; and delivering unique new insights that set creators and entrepreneurs on the path to their next success. Data played a transformative, positive role in people’s lives during the pandemic, and has the potential to do so much more as we look to the future.  It is crucial that data is used and managed within a trusted, privacy centric framework, and that we as industry and Government together continue to educate and empower people to understand how their data is used, and to be confident in its security. Properly-consented, properly-secured data can empower people; it can support the vulnerable; it can help expand and accelerate our economy.  We have the talent, the drive and the ambition in Britain to do all of these things. The new framework sets a foundation to enable and empower, making Britain a desirable hub for investment; a great place to work and build a career; an ideal place to begin new ventures or find funding for existing ones. With the right foundations in place, the opportunity ahead will be limited only by our imaginations. For all of these reasons, Experian welcomes the Government’s goal of making this leap forward for the UK, and we look forward to seeing the detail of the new Data Act as it is released in the coming months. 

Two of Experian’s core values – innovation and financial inclusion – are on full display with Experian Boost™ being selected for Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards, which celebrates the “broadest ideas … that have the potential to affect true systems change.” Experian Boost is a first-of-its-kind service designed to help consumers improve their credit profile and thrive financially. Nearly 9 million people have connected the service to report their on-time utility, telecom, and video streaming service payments. The service tackles inequity and exclusion from the credit economy by enabling consumers to add positive payment history that reinforces their personal financial reliability directly into their Experian credit file, which can potentially boost their credit score instantly. At Experian, we continually focus on expanding credit to underserved communities. Most recently we introduced Experian Go™, a brand-new program that can potentially help the nearly 50 million people in the United States who have a nonexistent or limited credit history. This Fast Company recognition also reflects our purpose and innovative culture focused on creating products and solutions that help consumers thrive, including Experian Boost in the UK and Serasa’s Score Turbo in Brazil. Every day at Experian we are investing in new technologies, talented employees, and innovation to help consumers and our clients maximize every opportunity we have to offer.

With consumers relying more heavily on the digital economy for online shopping, mobile banking, streaming content and other activities, businesses are challenged with recognizing each individual across different devices and channels. The challenge lies with the virtually endless number of touchpoints, attributes and values that can be associated with one’s identity, which is comprised of vast amounts of online and offline, dynamic, multidimensional data. As identities have become more complex, and with the definition of identity constantly evolving, the challenge is now even more pressing. Businesses are applying sophisticated analytics to more accurately identify individuals and create a positive, cohesive customer experience, but it’s critical that they remember: for each consumer – their data and identity are personal. To help companies address consumer recognition, Experian recently unveiled Experian Identity, an integrated approach that incorporates the full breadth of the company’s authoritative data, analytics and technology solutions to help businesses across any industry better connect with their consumers in more personalized, meaningful and secure ways. Experian Identity addresses the need that businesses have to respond to the rapidly evolving identity market with interconnected, scalable technology, products and services that optimize the consumer experience.  Building Consumer Trust  The key to success for businesses is building consumer trust through the effective use of identity. And that starts with securely managing customer data, while ensuring privacy and regulatory compliance. As a person’s identity evolves over time through major life events, such as opening a first credit card, getting a student loan, buying a car or house, receiving hospital care, or securing a line of credit, businesses must adopt a “customer first” mindset that reinforces their brand and delivers a tailored customer experience. That experience is further strengthened when a business incorporates identity-driven decision-making into every brand touchpoint. By providing a seamless and secure experience, businesses can help consumers prevent fraud and mitigate risk (to themselves and their customers), and build a more holistic view of each individual or small business so they can respond with timely, relevant and fair offers that better address their consumers’ needs.The resulting customer journey becomes demonstrably personalized, responsive, and valued. Constant Innovation Required Identity data sets are constantly growing with inputs from new interactions. Many future sources of data have yet to be even conceived or developed. Staying ahead of the identity market curve is vital, and it requires building and continually evolving an enterprise-scale identity solution that interconnects with your own unique data and systems to create attribute-rich profiles of your customers that work across any identity application. That’s Experian Identity. For more information on how Experian Identity helps optimize identity solutions, visit www.experian.com/identity-solutions and click this link to download the Making Identities Personal white paper.

Simplifying healthcare for all - that seems like a tall task to accomplish considering the last two years. What we once considered simple activities in our daily lives, such as going to the store to buy groceries or getting children to school, was upended by a global pandemic. Factor in the massive changes in healthcare operations, and it is clear the system needs to continue to evolve. It also cements my belief that Experian Health’s mission is even more relevant and achievable today than it was pre-COVID 19. In fact, this aspiration of simplifying healthcare for all is top of mind for me and Experian as we go into HIMSS22, the premier healthcare conference being held in Orlando this week. The healthcare industry has undergone massive changes since the fateful announcements in early 2020. While adapting to the pandemic was a huge undertaking for many organizations at the onset, those who opted to embrace change saw the payoff as they simplified administrative tasks and created efficiencies for both providers and patients. We saw organizations eagerly adopt technology and tools to take paperwork digital, streamlining the patient intake process and improving the accuracy of the data received. Instead of phone calls, patients and providers scheduled appointments and communicated online through secure portals saving time and manpower. The use of telehealth appointments allowed providers to see more patients and do so safely. Who would not want the simplicity of carving out just a few minutes from the comfort of one’s home for a non-urgent appointment? We are proud to have been a part of this evolution helping healthcare organizations pivot in the face of such a daunting predicament. For example, through our digital front door solutions, patients were able to schedule and pre-register for appointments online avoiding extra time spent in waiting rooms. We verified hundreds of thousands of identities quickly as Americans lined up for COVID-19 testing and vaccines. Our mobile payments system served to make the financial aspects of care easier to fulfill. Providers turned to us to help recoup costs from the government and insurers for COVID-19 care with our insurance discovery solution. Experian will not stop here, and we will continue to innovate high-tech, data-driven approaches to simplify healthcare for all; I hope the industry doesn’t stop either in tackling tough operational challenges using the power of technology and data. With this in mind, I look forward to hearing about the lessons learned by the industry as well as future innovations from the participants at HIMSS22. It’s the “can’t-miss healthcare conference of the year,” and we are pleased to be a sponsor and exhibitor once again. For those attending, visit us at Booth #3059. Taking the conference playbook of a hybrid approach with both digital and in-person participation, the healthcare industry should follow suit. Let’s certainly keep valuable in-person mechanisms in place, but not forget about the last two years and the incredible progress made that moved the industry forward. At Experian, we strive to help clients operate more quickly, smoothly and efficiently across the healthcare journey. With a new mindset in the industry and the tools available to act on change from providers like Experian, simplifying healthcare for all is not just a mission but an outcome we must achieve. Tom Cox is President of Experian Health.