Greater transparency in buy now, pay later activity is key to helping consumers build their credit histories and supporting responsible lending.
Experian North AmericaScott Brown, Group President, Financial Services
Affirm plans to report all pay-over-time loan products issued from April 1, 2025, and beyond, including Pay-in-4. The move will help drive greater transparency into the buy now, pay later market while helping consumers build their credit histories over time.
Read Moreio55 Button 2- Learn more Primary button Secondary button Related Posts
Today, we stand at the forefront of a digital revolution that is reshaping the financial services industry. And, against this backdrop, financial institutions are at vastly different levels of maturity; the world’s biggest banks are managing large-scale infrastructure migrations and making significant investments in AI while regional banks and credit unions are putting plans in place for modernization strategies, and fintechs are purpose-built and cloud native. To explore this more, I recently had the privilege of attending the annual Reuters NEXT live event in New York City. The event gathers globally recognized leaders across business, finance, technology, and government to tackle some of today’s most pressing issues. On the World Stage, I joined Del Irani, a talented anchor and broadcast journalist, to discuss the future of lending and the pivotal role of data and AI in building a more inclusive financial system. Improving financial access Our discussion highlighted the lack of access to traditional financial systems, and the impact it has on nearly 100 million people in North America alone. Globally, the problem affects over one billion people. These people, who are credit invisible, unscoreable, or have subprime credit scores, are unable to secure everyday financial products that many of us take for granted. What many don’t realize is, this is not a fringe subset of the population. Most of us, myself included, know someone who has faced the challenges of financial exclusion. Everyday Americans, including young people who are just starting out, new immigrants and people from diverse communities, often lack access to mainstream financial products. We discussed how traditional lending has a limited view of a consumer. Like looking through a keyhole, the lender’s understanding of the person in view is often incomplete and obstructed. However, with expanded data, technology, and advanced analytics, there is an opportunity to better understand the whole person, and as a result have a more inclusive financial system. At Experian, we have a unique ability to connect the power of traditional credit with alternative data, bringing a more holistic understanding of consumers and their behaviors. We are dedicated to leveraging our rich history in data and our expertise in technology to create the future of credit and ultimately bring financial power to everyone. The future of lending After spending two days with over 700 industry leaders from around the world, one thing is abundantly clear: much like the early days of the internet, today, we are at the cutting-edge of a technical revolution. Reflecting on my time at Reuters NEXT, I am particularly excited by the collective commitment to drive innovative, and smarter ways of working. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of how data and technology can transform financial services, and Experian is positioned to play a significant role. As we look to the future, I am excited about the ways we will create new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike.
The advertising ecosystem has seen significant transformation over the past few years, with increased privacy regulation, changes in available signals, and the rise of channels like connected TV and retail media. These changes are impacting the way that consumers interact with brands and how brands understand and continue to deliver relevant messages to consumers with precision. Experian has been helping marketers navigate these changes, and as a result, our marketing data and identity solutions underpin much of today’s advertising industry. We’re committed to empowering marketers and agencies to understand and reach their target audiences, across all channels. Today, we are excited to announce our acquisition of Audigent—a leading data and activation platform in the advertising industry. With Audigent’s combination of first-party publisher data, inventory and deep supply-side distribution relationships, publishers, big and small, can empower marketers to better understand their customers, expand the reach of their target audiences and activate those audiences across the most impactful inventory. I am excited to bring together Audigent’s supply-side network as a natural extension to our existing demand-side capabilities. Audigent’s ability to combine inventory with targeted audiences using first-party, third-party and contextual signals provides the best of all worlds, allowing marketers to deliver campaigns centered on consumer choices, preferences, and behaviors. The addition of Audigent further strengthens our strategy to be the premier independent provider of marketing data and identity, ultimately creating more relevant experiences for consumers. To learn more about Experian and Audigent, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/ and https://audigent.com/.
Experian has provided World Omni Financial Corp. (World Omni) with a flexible decision management solution based on its PowerCurve™ and Attribute Toolbox™ software that will streamline the processing and decisioning of automotive finance applications. “We needed a decision management solution, and Experian could deliver cost-effective, robust technology that quickly and seamlessly integrated with our loan origination system. This tool will enable us to grow our automotive finance business,” said Bill Shope, vice president of Portfolio Management at World Omni Financial Corp. “The solution also needed to be flexible enough to provide us with long-term support and growth capabilities as customer needs and market dynamics change.” As part of the solution, Experian’s PowerCurve Strategy Management software will enable World Omni to quickly design, test, execute and continuously improve decision strategies. Experian’s Attribute Toolbox will allow World Omni to tap into the wealth of credit and noncredit data available in today’s market. It also contains Experian’s Premier Attributes, the credit industry’s most robust and predictive tri-bureau credit attributes, and Custom Attributes, which enable users to make risk decisions within their application processing system that are specific to their financing processes. “Organizations like World Omni are constantly trying to better understand consumers, analyze areas for risk and look for new growth opportunities,” said Charles Chung, president of Decision Analytics North America at Experian. “This requires empowering business users, without overburdening IT, to make and monitor decisions that result in both loyal customers and improved profits. To accomplish this, they need the power of today’s best decision management software and the intelligence of advanced analytics that will provide them with more agility, flexibility, control and insight into every lending decision.” Experian provides software, analytics and services in a number of ways to meet individual client needs. The World Omni solution has been implemented in a secure, hosted environment within the Experian firewall at one of its state-of-the-art data centers. World Omni also will utilize Experian’s Precise IDSM product for verification and fraud detection. These services are integrated with Experian’s PowerCurve Strategy Management and Attribute Toolbox.
Most people shopping for a new car ask themselves that question all the time. In fact, there are many questions that surround whether to buy or lease a vehicle. What are the benefits of one over the other? Would my payment be lower if I leased? What if I decided to buy the car after, would there be a penalty? Recently, these questions became very real to me when I found myself having to shop for a new car following the untimely death of my husband’s previous vehicle. The deceased was the typical “Dude” car – huge engine, power everything and it was bright yellow. For the new car, I wanted him to get something a bit more sensible; He wanted everything he had before and then some. So, as you can imagine, shopping was a lot of fun (insert sarcasm here). I am glad to say, however, that what we ended up with made us both very happy and satisfied. We ultimately agreed upon a brand new dark gray metallic mid-sized sedan with lots of nice features to please the gadget fanatic in my husband, and a fuel efficient engine to please the economical budgetista in me. And for the first time in our adult lives, we leased! As it turns out, Experian Automotive’s recently released State of the Automotive Finance Market report showed that lots of folks are making that same decision. In fact, this quarter’s report said that automotive leasing achieved the highest level since the organization began tracking the data in 2006. According to the report, leasing accounted for a record 27.5 percent of all new vehicles financed, up from 24.4 percent in Q1 2012. Additionally, findings showed that the average monthly payment for a new vehicle financed in Q1 was $459, down from $462 in Q1 2012. While leasing a vehicle can help consumers achieve a lower monthly payment, the report also showed a rise in loan term lengths (65 months in Q1 2013, up from 64 months in Q1 2012) and a decrease in interest rates (4.5 percent in Q1 2013, down from 4.6 percent in Q1 2012), which helped to keep payments low for new vehicles financed. In Q1, the average loan amount for a new vehicle financed increased by $628, going from $26,020 in Q1 2012, to $26,648 in Q1 2013. The average used vehicle loan increased $461, going from $17,071 in Q1 2012, to $17,532 in Q1 2013. Check out the full press release. For more information on this report and other automotive-related insights, please visit www.Experian.com/Automotive.
Consumers are can now be notified when their personal information is being used in an authentication transaction, allowing them to assess whether or not they recognize and expect their identity to be in review by a business. The service enables consumers to respond to the notification, and in cases of potential fraud, to be directed to seamless and effective resolution assistance. “In the war against fraud, financial institutions, retailers and identity monitoring service providers must deploy innovative technologies that can accurately detect identity theft as close to a transaction as possible,” said Julie Conroy, research director for Aite Group. “Bringing consumers themselves into the fraud prevention process provides another layer of vigilance, which enables businesses not only to better protect their customers and prevent losses, but also to establish a stronger relationship with the consumer.” The ability to accurately alert potential fraud victims as close to a transaction as possible provides business clients and their monitored consumer base with the tools needed to head off potential identity theft while it is in flight. With this service, Experian is helping its clients give consumers additional insight to their identity usage well beyond traditional credit inquiries. As online and mobile transactions continue to explode, consumers want to be alerted not only to inquiries to their credit profile, but also to any use of their personal information in non-face-to-face transactions. Precise ID Personal Protection Alerts enable direct-to-consumer service providers to engage consumers by notifying them when their identity has been verified across any of Experian’s identity authentication services. Within seconds, the service alerts consumers via text, email or mobile app during a transaction involving their identity and gives them the opportunity to stop identity theft before it occurs. The product is designed to provide accurate and timely notification to consumers via its partners that provide identity monitoring services. Alerts contain detailed information that allows individuals to quickly recognize and assess the legitimate or fraudulent use of their identity. In cases of potential fraud, consumers are directed to reconciliation services and, if necessary, to the financial institution, retailer or other service provider that initiated the transaction.
In this article…
