About a month ago, Senior Decisioning Consultant Krista Santucci and I gave a presentation at Experian’s 2011 Vision Conference on Decisioning as a Service. Due to the positive feedback we received, I thought it might be of interest to members of the communications industry who might not have had the opportunity to attend. A common malady The presentation revolved around a case study of an Experian client. Like many communications industry companies, this client had multiple acquisition systems in place to process consumer and commercial applications. In addition, many of the processes to mitigate fraud and support Red Flag compliance were handled manually. These issues increased both complexity and cost, and limited the client’s ability to holistically manage its customer base. The road to recovery At the beginning of the presentation, we provided a handout that listed the top ten critical functionalities for decisioning platforms. After a thorough review of the client’s system, it was clear that they had none of the ten functionalities. Three main requirements for the new decisioning platform were identified: A single system to support their application processes (integration) A minimum of 90% automatic decisions for all applications (waterfall) The ability to integrate into various data sources and not be resource intensive on their IT department (data access)     Decisioning as a ServiceSM is a custom integrated solution that is easily applied to any type of business and can be implemented to either augment or completely overhaul an organization’s current decisioning platforms. We designed this client’s solution with a single interface that manages both consumer and commercial transactions, and supports a variety of access channels and treatment strategies. Following implementation, the client immediately benefited from: Streamlined account opening processes A reduction in manual processes Decreased demand on IT resources The ability to make better, more consistent decisions at a lower cost The agility to quickly respond to changing market needs and regulatory challenges     Evaluate your own business Do you recognize some of your own challenges in this post? Download our checklist of the top ten critical functionalities for decisioning platforms and evaluate your own system. As you go through the list, think about what benefits you would derive by having access to each of the capabilities. And if you’d like to learn more about Decisioning as a Service, please complete our form.  

By: Kennis Wong  Data is the very core of fraud detection. We are constantly seeking new and mining existing data sources that give us more insights into consumers’ fraud and identity theft risk. Here is a way to categorize the various data sources. Account level – When organizations detect fraud, naturally they leverage the data in-house. This type of data is usually from the individual account activities such as transactions, payments, locations or types of purchases, etc. For example, if there’s a purchase $5000 at a dry cleaner, the transaction itself is suspicious enough to raise a red flag. Customer level – Most of the times we want to see a bigger picture than only at the account level. If the customer also has other accounts with the organization, we want to see the status of those accounts as well. It’s not only important from a fraud detection perspective, but it’s also important from a customer relationship management perspective. Consumer level – As Experian Decision Analytics’ clients can attest, sometimes it’s not sufficient to look only at the data within an organization but also to look at all the financial relationships of the consumer. For example, in the situation of bust out fraud or first-party fraud, if you only look at the individual account, it wouldn’t be clear whether a consumer has truly committed the fraud. But when you look at the behavior of all the financial relationships, then the picture becomes clear. Identity level – Fraud detection can go into the identity level. What I mean is that we can tie a consumer’s individual identity elements with those of other consumers to discover hidden inconsistencies and relationships. For example, we can observe the use of the same SSN across different applications and see if the phones or addresses are the same. In the account management environment, when detecting existing account fraud or account takeover, this level of linkage is very useful as more data becomes available after the account is open. Loading…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is a new regulatory agency that is still evolving. But even now it’s clear that it will have unprecedented powers with a broad reach across industries – including communications. Although there are questions about how the CFPB will operate, there are still steps you can take to prepare. To help you get ready, let’s review a few of the areas you should expect CFPB to affect your business, followed by three questions you can help your customers answer. 3 Ways the CFPB Will Impact Business: Consumer disclosures must be clear and easy to read. The goal is to ensure that financial terms and conditions of services (especially for credit cards and mortgages) are disclosed in clear, easy-to-understand terms that allow consumers to compare offers. Consumer products to be examined rather than industries – Regulatory agencies are typically structured around the kinds of businesses they supervise. With the CFPB, we’ll see a regulator with a perspective more focused on consumer financial products and services. Transparency on how credit scores affect terms & conditions – Greater transparency about credit scores and how they are used to determine loan rates will also be a priority. Lenders are required to disclose a score they used in all risk-based pricing notices and adverse action notices beginning July 21, 2011.   CFPB Takes Authority on July 21 The CFPB receives full regulatory and enforcement authority on July 21, so it’s important for covered entities to continue complying with current law and striving to follow industry best practices. Companies need to demonstrate that they have taken steps to increase consumer credit education and transparency of credit scores, as these items top the CFPB agenda. Experian Consumer Education Resources Experian is addressing the growing need for consumer education by offering Experian Credit EducatorSM, a credit education service in which consumers engage in a one-on-one credit education session with an Experian credit professional agent,  together reviewing  a copy of their credit report and VantageScore® credit score. Answers to 3 Consumer Questions: As part of Experian Credit Educator, consumers learn the answers to three main questions: What’s in a credit report? What is a score, and what types of information can increase or decrease a score? How does credit affect my financial situation?     Experian Credit Educator allows lenders to provide customers a personalized education service, thereby advancing customer engagement while improving customer satisfaction, loyalty, portfolio quality, and cross-sell opportunities. Do you have questions about the CFPB’s role? Leave a comment or contact your Experian representative if you need assistance in complying with new regulatory requirements.