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By the time Vikki Nunnery decided to join the U.S. Army, she was almost finished with her nursing degree. It was her senior year, on the cusp of achieving her Bachelor of Science. A professor piqued her interest in the military. “One of my instructors was an LPN. She deployed and did a presentation about being a nurse in the army. I came in (to the Army) as a registered nurse (RN) and am now a nurse practitioner,” Nunnery said. Now Lieutenant Colonel Nunnery, DNP, is married to a fellow military member, has two children and has been on active duty for 17 years. Between student loans and credit cards, she also accumulated a lot of debt. “We never talked about (money) at home. My family never talked about managing money,” Nunnery said. “Being married with kids, I’m trying to be more financially responsible for the future.” Experian and Operation HOPE are helping Nunnery do just that. She is a client of the expansion of its partnership, which offers new, no-cost dedicated resources specifically for active duty members, veterans and military families across the country. The program provides financial coaching and wellness, credit education and financial disaster preparedness. The unique circumstances of the military community impact their finances more than the general population. A survey shows servicemembers and their spouses have more difficulty paying some monthly bills and finding economic assistance because of overseas deployments and frequent moves, combined with rising inflation. “(This work) is personal. I’ve been working around military communities for over 10 years. I know the challenges,” said Jessica Hamel, financial wellbeing coach for Operation HOPE Inside Experian program. Hamel is a Gold Star sister and military spouse. Her husband’s divorce and her brother’s passing had negative financial impacts on their respective families. “Often with some of our younger soldiers, younger service members, they haven’t had life experience in terms of needing to budget. We have members of the military right now right out of high school and there’s not a lot of experience managing their own money. They’re quickly thrust into a place where they don’t have a support system to do that,” Hamel said. “What we see at some major bases is a lot of predatory financial institutions – payday lenders, title max loans, pawn shops, buy-here-pay-here dealerships.” "We have members of the military right now right out of high school and there’s not a lot of experience managing their own money. They’re quickly thrust into a place where they don’t have a support system to do that." Without a foundation of money management know-how, as service members move up in rank and earn more money, their habits can follow. Hamel stressed the importance of helping clients establish a foundation of knowledge and provide tools to help them address specific financial situations and their future. “Clients know they need to do something different than the way they grew up, but perhaps they grew up in generational poverty and they’re using the military to secure a job immediately, get job experience or support. They can make a great living in the military,” she said. “They don’t know what they don’t know, but they know they don’t have all the right information.” With Hamel’s guidance, Nunnery has set up a budget and developed habits that have led to increased savings, saving for a house, and a bump in credit scores. Hamel is also exploring whether Nunnery qualifies for public school loan forgiveness. The couple is planning to pass on these lessons to their kids, starting with opening their own checking accounts, and teaching them how to save, budget, and the importance of credit scores. “Without Jessica, we’d still be living paycheck to paycheck. I wasn’t paying attention to my accounts. I was just spending and spending,” Nunnery said. “Little things like a budget, where our money is going – she really helps us focus on these things. That’s really good support.” “We have so many people who haven’t learned about credit and then get blamed for a game they never got the rules to,” Hamel said. “I’m honored to be the coach for this program.” For more information about financial coaching and resources for servicemembers, military family or veterans, contact Jessica Hamel at Jessica.hamel@operationhope.org.

Healthcare insurance coverage is a necessity in the U.S. but it’s a complex system to navigate for both providers and patients. At Experian Health, we aim to simplify the administrative and operational sides of healthcare so improving the registration and insurance identification process for providers within the patient access workflow is an important problem we want to help solve. With a myriad of insurers, plans and benefits coverage, along with complexities like multiple levels of coverage some individuals may have, providers have a tough task trying to coalesce all the right information when a patient registers for care in real time – so the searching and querying is often pushed out beyond the registration desk, creating manual rework, denied claims and delays in reimbursements. This downstream impact has been a huge pain point with claims denials contributing to hospitals and medical practices losing more than $200 billion dollars in lost revenue per year. A rejection not only impacts the provider but the patient too. If inaccurate information is submitted to a payer and the claim gets denied, providers don’t get reimbursed and patients could receive bills that they may not be able to pay. We believe technology is the answer to solve many administrative challenges, which led us to acquire Wave HDC, a healthcare company that can deliver a real-time response. Identifying insurance coverage and benefits is a piece to the overall claims puzzle and this workflow has been ripe for improvement with better software. We believe we can now deliver the best solution in the market with this integration. What is Wave HDC’s expertise? Their AI-powered healthcare data curation solutions utilize an “if-then” logic, returning multiple data points required for accurate patient billing from a single inquiry, in real-time (30-45 second processing time), during the registration process. This innovation is a major step forward. No longer is a single response efficient as it pertains to uncovering a patient’s eligibility, coordination of benefits, insurance coverage and beyond. Our acquisition of Wave HHDC transforms the outdated clearinghouse model and will deliver immense benefits to our healthcare providers in the form of more accurate claim submissions and higher reimbursement rates, while also reducing manual work on their administrative teams. In fact, Wave HDC has prevented denials for its clients of over $1 billion dollars since 2020. Reducing claims denials will have a major impact on providers as the industry faces many headwinds including inflation, complex regulations, and constantly changing payer rules that may hurt their financial stability. The issue is only getting worse; a 2022 Experian Health survey revealed that 42 percent of respondents see claims denials increasing and that uptick is between 10-15 percent according to a third of respondents. Additionally, 3 out of 4 survey respondents say reducing denials is the highest priority. We are very excited to tackle this pain point with an advanced solution and welcome the Wave HDC team and these additional capabilities to Experian Health. For more information about Experian Health, visit experian.com/health.

Early in my career, I gained a lot of knowledge about credit. But when I moved to the United States from Brazil, establishing credit was a challenge. I worked part-time in a credit card company call center during college. I come from a humble family, and through helping customers, I learned the ins and outs about credit and money management. But all the solid credit history I built up in my home country didn’t transfer to the U.S. When I immigrated, I had to pay upfront for everything from utilities to a cellphone and it made me feel at a disadvantage. Thanks to Experian Boost®i, our feature that allows you to build credit without debt, and responsible management of debt, my FICO® Scoreii quickly rose to reflect my true creditworthiness. But I’ll never forget how it felt to be invisible when it came to the credit system. Being seen is the first step to equitable access to financial tools. Now that Experian conveniently offers Experian credit reports in Spanish onlineiii, consumers who prefer to access information in Spanish will be able to directly comprehend their credit profile so they can feel empowered. Understanding your credit report is a critical component for your ability to make informed decisions about your finances. As the executive sponsor of our Juntos Employee Resource Group (ERG) and someone who was new to credit in the U.S., I know first-hand that being seen is the first step in a journey towards financial wellness. To help you be informed, Experian also has a Spanish-language credit e-book and articles at the Ask Experian blog. Learn more about my financial health journey and my colleague's through #ExperianStories. i 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. ii 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. iii Only Experian credit reports are available in Spanish. All other services associated with an Experian membership are available in English only. English fluency is required for full access to Experian’s products.