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.
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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/.
Growing up, my family rarely talked about money. So, in college, when I had the opportunity to get my first credit card, I also found myself in a little trouble when the first bill came. Most of us simply don’t learn about money matters until we find ourselves in these difficult situations. That’s one of the reasons why we’re excited to launch a creative and new program to teach young adults about the basics to building a financial legacy. “Protect The Bag” debuts today. It’s a six-part web series produced in partnership with Grammy-award winning artist, entrepreneur, author and community advocate, Lecrae. We first met Lecrae when he supported a United for Financial Health initiative in his hometown last year. “Protect The Bag” is a hip master class with finance and credit basics presented in an authentic way. Lecrae describes it as “edutainment” that includes scripted skits and interviews with everyday people. His friends Tyler Lockett, Coco Jones and WHATUPRG, among others, join him and share their financial health journeys as part of the shows as well. “Protect The Bag” is not just about credit. It’s about all aspects of personal finance. We’re proud of this innovative way to help consumers understand topics like saving, investing, budgeting and identity protection through someone they admire and trust. We hope you tune in every Tuesday, starting today, for the next six weeks. Episodes will appear on Lecrae’s YouTube channel starting at 7:00 p.m.EST/4 p.m.PST.
I am delighted to have announced our new partnership with Code First Girls, a non-profit organisation that teaches women to code for free, and helps increase the number of women – an under-represented group – working in tech. As a South African woman of Indian heritage, a single parent of two bi-racial girls aged 18 and 22, and a human resources executive with a passion for talent, leadership, and development, I work daily with my team to support Experian deliver on its brand promise of powering opportunities to create a better tomorrow for our people, consumers and businesses globally. So I am personally and professionally very proud of this development. Our partnership means four young women can study for a Code First Girls‘ Nanodegree, while working as paid interns in EMEA for the next nine months. These young talents come from diverse backgrounds, helping us diversify our workforce and bringing fresh thinking and new perspectives. They’ll benefit from our flexible ways of working, being based primarily from home. They’ll gain international experience as they are joining our Data Science and Innovation teams in South Africa and Italy. Moreover, they will help us drive our financial inclusion agenda by working on our United for Financial Health programme. This means we will have four young women working on financial inclusion solutions for women and four 18 to 25-year-olds working on financial inclusion solutions for the same demographic. This is a people-led innovation that contributes to the circular economy and adds purpose to our Company’s commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in its fullest sense, supporting our sustainable business goals. This isn’t philanthropy or theory. This partnership means our interns will work hard, learn and develop themselves as they prepare for a career in data and tech. It means we will also learn and evolve through this initiative. I’m curious: how do young, fresh talented people experience us? Will this partnership really enable four young women to start sustainable, fulfilling careers in tech, data, artificial intelligence, or software development? Will it help Experian attract and retain the best early tech talent in future? As with every innovative step we take, we’re unsure of the outcome, and that’s OK, as well as exciting. What is important is that we’ve started a new journey together, and I’m excited to see where it takes us. If you’d like to meet our EMEA interns and track their journey, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Over the last 19 months the pandemic has disproportionately impacted underserved and low-income communities and exacerbated the health and economic situations of millions of consumers, making it even harder to recover from financial hardships. We’ve made it our mission to change this, and we’re doing so by unlocking the power of data to facilitate access to fair and affordable credit and create new opportunities for people and businesses. We use our products, services, and time to make a real difference to the financial lives of people in many ways. This is at the heart of what we do as a company, and it’s one of the many reasons why it’s such a great honor to be named by Fortune to its global ranking of the top 50 companies making measurable progress addressing social problems. Experian Boost is one example of our commitment to improving financial inclusion, providing users access to credit as a result of improved credit scores. Two years ago, we created this first-of-its-kind service designed to help consumers instantly improve their credit score by giving them credit for on-time utility, telecom, and streaming service payments. Experian Boost in the USA and UK, combined with Serasa’s Score Turbo in Brazil, are empowering consumers to take more control of their financial well-being and promoting financial inclusion. United for Financial Health is another new financial recovery program we created to help consumers who don’t typically have access to credit. Through this initiative we teamed up with 11 NGOs to reach 35 million people in less than a year, smashing our first-year target of 15 million. The partnerships this year have focused on three primary consumer markets – the USA, the UK and Ireland and Brazil. That said, we recognize there is more work to be done. In our 2021 Sustainable Business Report, we made several commitments, including to reach 100 million people through our United for Financial Health campaign by 2024. We remain focused on using our business to make real, sustainable change. Being named on Fortune’s 2021 'Change the World' list is also a testament to our truly inclusive culture at Experian, where everyone’s hard work and commitment is proving to deliver a positive impact to society. Through our investments in data and advanced analytics, we will continue to help lenders identify consumers who are excluded from the credit ecosystem, but who can fulfill their financial obligations and pay responsibly. We want to empower consumers to take control of their financial lives, and we will continue to take strides to do so, ensuring we do the right thing for those we serve.
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