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Grab a pen and paper. Jot down some differences between the Northeast and Midwest. What came to mind? Maybe it was the bright city lights of the Northeast versus the Midwest’s starlit farms? Or maybe it’s the city’s busy streets compared to quiet open fields? What you may or may not have written down is that Northeasterners prefer to drive more import vehicles than the folks in the Midwest. According to Experian Automotive’s mid-year review of automotive market trends, in the first half of 2013, the top five new vehicle models in the Northeast region were all import brands. Conversely, as one might have guessed, American-made vehicles dominated the Midwestern roads. In the Northeast, the list was made up of the Honda Accord, Honda CR-V, Toyota Camry, Honda Civic and Nissan Altima. Out in the Midwest, Ford vehicles made up four of the top five and the Chevrolet Silverado 1500 filled out the list. The top five in order included the F-150, Fusion, Escape, Silverado 1500 and the Focus. In the West, the list was more closely aligned with Northeast, as import vehicles made up four of the five, with the Ford F-150 being the only domestic brand. The list included the Honda Civic, Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, F-150 and Toyota Corolla. The South was a mixture of both import and domestic with the Ford F150, Toyota Camry, Nissan Altima, Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and the Toyota Corolla making up the top five. Other highlights from the analysis included: • Full-sized pickup trucks were the most popular vehicle segment in the first half of 2013, making up almost 15 percent of the vehicles on the road • In Q2 2013, Buick and Volvo were the top brands with the longest average length of ownership at 98 and 92 months, respectively • General Motors (26.6 percent), Ford (18.9 percent) and Toyota (12.6 percent) were top three in vehicle market share for first half of 2013 For more information on this analysis, or to view a recorded webinar of the findings, please visit https://www.experian.com/automotive.

In the personal finance world, credit is one of the hottest topics to talk about and there are many resources available to consumers. To further empower consumers to take a more active role in managing their credit, Experian provides a number of solid consumer education programs. As a positive extension to those, in 2011 we developed Experian Credit Educator, a consumer-education service that offers personalized, live, one-on-one, telephone-based credit education sessions to consumers and customers of Experian’s clients. Experian recently announced that we’ve added new features to this service in order to give consumers insights into specific actions which may produce an improvement to their credit score. Participants will now receive a longer session with an Experian Credit Educator agent, score simulations providing specific examples of actions that may improve their credit score and more resources to assist in understanding their credit profile. With this enhancement, the Experian Credit Educator agents are able to answer consumers’ questions as they relate to their personal VantageScore® credit score and provide insight into how specific actions can affect the score, such as: “Is there anything I can do today that may improve my score?” “I have $500 to put towards my debt – what’s the best way to distribute that to improve my score?” “I want to prioritize paying down my debt, what actions could produce an increase in my score by five points?” An Experian Credit Educator session costs $39.95 and includes: An approximately 35-minute, one-on-one, dynamic phone session with a trained Experian Credit Educator Agent A detailed walk-through and a copy of a personalized Experian credit report A VantageScore with an explanation of score factors and benchmark scores for each participant’s city, state, and region within the United States Score simulations providing specific examples of actions that may improve the consumer’s score Links to online resources for credit management and life events information Consumers who want to take the next step in improving their finances can visit Experian.com/CreditEducator or call 1 877 903 1009 to initiate a personalized education session.

Today I’ve been reading sensational and very misleading headlines saying things like “Experian Sold Consumer Data to ID Theft Service” and “Experian Duped into Selling Social Security Nos.” Let me share with you the actual – and factual – events that led to the investigation and subsequent arrest of the suspect in the case surrounding Court Ventures and US Info Search. The suspect in this case obtained access to US Info Search data through Court Ventures prior to the time Experian acquired the company. To be clear, no Experian database was accessed. Experian acquired Court Ventures in March, 2012 because of its national public records database. After the acquisition, the US Secret Service notified Experian that Court Ventures had been and was reselling data from US Info Search to a third party that the US Secret Service was investigating as possibly engaged in illegal activity. Following the notice by the US Secret Service, Experian discontinued reselling US Info Search data and worked closely and in full cooperation with law enforcement to bring Vietnamese national Hieu Minh Ngo, the alleged perpetrator, to justice. Because of the ongoing federal investigation, we are not free to say anything further at this time.