When financial planners and tax advisors meet with clients to review their portfolios, chances are they don't go over their credit reports often. Maybe they never do. Kiplinger’s estimates less than half of professional financial advisors take the time to review credit reports with clients. But taking this step is critical to understanding a person’s complete financial situation and creating a realistic plan. Prepare for Future Opportunities Clients may have all the credit they need at the moment, but if their credit score is mediocre or low, they might end up paying for it in the future. Just when they want to refinance a loan, buy more insurance, apply for a dream job or buy a business, they may discover their credit score is an obstacle. Check for Errors                    Credit bureaus collect billions of data points from millions of businesses each year, and it’s important to check a credit report for accuracy. If there are errors in a client’s file, he or she may be unfairly penalized. Keep in mind that nearly every company checks credit reports to determine who to do business with. Potential employers, business partners and insurance companies give credit files a look before deciding whether or not to make an offer to a person. Awareness Mistakes aren't the only factor leading to a low credit score. Too many hard inquiries, a maxed-out credit card or a number of small loans that could be paid off all cost credit points. Reviewing a credit report is a great way to help clients see the real impact their habits have on their financial life, and they could realize a significant rise in their credit score with little effort. Stand Out in the Crowd Even if a person has an exceptional credit report, a financial or tax advisor will gain credibility by reviewing their information with them. Doing so demonstrates out-of-the-box thinking and concern for a person’s financial health. Let's see a robo-advisor do this. Financial professionals can easily and securely review their clients’ credit reports online. Ready to understand your client’s complete financial situation? Try out our online solution at no cost to you. Interested in integrating with your existing financial or tax planning software? Learn more about integration options with Experian’s API.

Millennials are coming of age and experiencing big life moments — college graduation, their first job, getting married and moving out.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the EMV liability shift, we have seen an increase in e-commerce fraud — to the tune of 15% higher than last year.

In this new Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) era, calling your customers isn’t a thing of the past. It’s still okay to reach out to your clients by phone, whether to offer a new product or collect on an overdue bill. But strict compliance with TCPA rules is critical for any business that contacts customers by phone. Some of the very best ways you can protect yourself from TCPA exposure is to follow four steps when creating your dialing strategy: Customer consent: It’s important to maintain and update your customers’ contact preferences and consent to call them. Simply having a phone number on an application isn’t sufficient. Companies are required to have written permission, such as “I consent to calling my cell phone when there’s a problem …” Remember, permission may only be granted by the party who subscribes to the cellular service or who regularly uses that cell phone number. Landline or wireless?: Your database should also include the phone type for the telephone numbers you have for your customers. The dialing rules differ depending on the phone type, so it’s critical to know the type of phone you are calling or texting. Verify ownership: Ownership of cell phones should especially be validated to ensure the number hasn’t been reassigned and that the person who gave consent still owns the phone. One call can be made to a reassigned number with no liability, assuming you have no knowledge the number has changed. Repeating the action could lead to fines from $500 to $1,500 per infraction. Scrub Your Database: Have practices in place to remove any confirmed reassigned phone numbers from your database. This will help to improve your right-party contact rate and save you from potential TCPA headaches. No one disagrees that calling cell numbers is a risky business, but it can be done if you set the proper workflow in motion. Click here to learn more about Experian solutions that will help to reduce your TCPA compliance risk.

Leasing continued its strong growth as the share of new vehicles leased jumped from 26.9% in Q2 2015 to a record high of 31.4% in Q2 2016.

With the Oct. 3, 2016 compliance date upon us, many lenders continue to debate how they would like to solve for the Military Lending Act (MLA). With new enhancements, more protections have been granted to members of the military and their dependents when it comes to “consumer credit” products, specifically around the 36% cap on the MAPR. The key then becomes how to identify these individuals. At origination, how can the lender know if an individual is a member of the military, or a service member’s dependent? The answer, of course, lies in verification. Under the new Department of Defense (DOD) rule, lenders will have to check each credit applicant to confirm that they are not a service member, spouse, or the dependent of a service member.  The final rule includes a “safe harbor” from liability for lenders who verify the MLA status of a consumer through a nationwide Credit Reporting Agency (CRA) or the DOD’s own database, known as the DMDC. Obviously, lenders will want to have this “safe harbor,” so the question becomes do you opt for the direct or indirect solution? The direct solution is to have the lender access the DMDC on their own. With this option, expected turnaround time is 24 hours for batch searches. The DMDC expects the volume of searches to their servers to increase from 220 million a week to 1.9 billion a week. For some, this feels like a more manual process, but it can be done. The indirect solution involves the CRA accessing the DMDC data on the lender’s behalf. In Experian’s case, this would translate into lenders seeing the MLA indicator on the credit report at point of origination or making a call out for just the MLA indicator. The process is integrated into the credit-pull cycle, so no manual effort is required on the lender’s end. MLA status is simply flagged. The rule also permits the consumer report to be obtained from a reseller that obtains such a report from a nationwide consumer reporting agency. Required data to perform a search includes full legal name, address, social security number and date of birth. This applies to both the credit report add-on and Experian’s standalone solutions. If any of this data is missing from the inquiry, Experian is unable to perform the MLA search. Credit card lenders have until Oct. 3, 2017 to adhere to the new standards, but all other applicable lenders must act now and build out their compliance standards and solutions. Direct or indirect? That is the question. To learn more about MLA or how Experian can help, visit our dedicated-MLA site.

Experian analyzes e-commerce fraud attack rates bi-annually. The 2016 e-commerce fraud attack rates look to be at least 15% higher than last year’s total.

Most businesses are familiar with credit bureaus today, but myths still exist around reporting credit data. Let's examine the top three and bust them.

CNP fraud accounts for 60%-70% of card fraud in many countries & is increasing. US merchants/card issuers likely will see rise in CNP fraud w/EMV migration

Prescriptive solutions can synthesize big data, analytics, and business strategies to provide businesses an optimized workflow to reach a final decision.

Experian conducted a joint-survey that uncovered insights into the topic of conversational commerce and voice assistants. The survey asked about general consumer satisfaction with the voice-recognition capabilities of Amazon's Alexa relative to other smart voice assistants such as Siri and Google.

Unfortunately, identity theft can happen to anyone and has far-reaching consequences for its victims. According to the US Department of Justice (DOJ)’s most recent study, 17.6 million people in the US experience some form of identity theft each year. This includes activities such as fraudulent credit card transactions or personal information being used to open unauthorized accounts. The most obvious consequence that identity theft victims encounter is financial loss, which comes in two forms: direct and indirect. Direct financial loss refers to the amount of money stolen or misused by the identity theft offender. Indirect financial loss includes any outside costs associated with identity theft, like legal fees or overdraft charges. The DOJ’s study found that victims experienced a combined average loss of $1,343. In total, identity theft victims lost a whopping $15.4 billion in 2014. Beyond money lost, identity theft can negatively impact credit scores. While credit card companies detect a majority of credit card fraud cases, the rest can go undetected for extended periods of time. A criminal’s delinquent payments, cash loans, or even foreclosures slowly manifest into weakened credit scores. Victims often only discover the problem when they are denied for a loan or credit card application. Last year, Experian found that these types of fraud take the longest time to resolve. Identity theft doesn’t just impact victims financially; it also often takes a significant emotional toll. A survey from the Identity Theft Research Center found that 69 percent felt fear for their personal financial security, and 65 percent felt rage or anger. And, almost 40 percent reported some sleep disruption. These feelings increased over time when victims were unable to settle the issue on their own, according to the report, which can result in problem as work or school, and add stress to relationships with friends and family. Thankfully, consumers are getting smarter about the best ways to protect their information, like using monitoring services or following security best practices. How are you protecting yourself against identity theft? Learn more about our Identity Protection Services

This summer, the CFPB took a significant step toward reforming the regulatory framework for the debt collection industry.

The first six months of 2016 has shown that the total credit card limits among the subprime and deep subprime credit range totaled $6.4 billion, the highest amount reported for those groups in the last five years. Our Q2 2016 Experian-Oliver Wyman Market Intelligence Report webinar will analyze the trends impacting consumer credit decisions in the current economy. The data is from the latest Experian Market Intelligence Brief report.

Fraud prevention strategies Juniper Research online payments