JR TOC Review

I’m a Business Systems Specialist on Experian’s Information Technology Services team. While the work I do is largely behind the scenes, the data I process helps power advertising campaigns, provide accurate credit score reports to consumers and enable people who might not otherwise have access to credit to achieve their goals. The most valuable thing I can provide the businesses Experian works with is accurate data, because data is the backbone of a business. I run systems and support software that helps process the data for Experian’s products and services, and work to ensure businesses have access to the most accurate data sets. Businesses from across different sectors send us data about their consumers—like if an individual paid rent or a bill on time — that we update into our databases so that when that person applies for a loan or to rent an apartment, our data is timely and accurately reflects that individual’s true credit score. Accuracy can be the difference between a person getting a lease or having to look elsewhere. The data I help process and service is used for other business purposes as well, like advertising campaigns. Marketers will send us a list of the demographics they’re looking to reach. I help aggregate and compare those lists of demographics against the data we already have on hand to provide that client with an accurate list of addresses. Armed with that timely, accurate information, those businesses can reach their target audience and increase revenue for that quarter – and consumers benefit from more targeted messaging from companies they care about. I joined Experian more than 20 years ago, and have seen it evolve and grow from essentially a traditional credit bureau to a global information services enterprise. For me, the extent to which we as a company can provide services that empower consumers to succeed on their life’s journey has always been the end deliverable. Read more #ExperianStories from our colleagues around the world.

International Women's Day is all about celebration, reflection, advocacy, and action. At Experian, we work hard to create a culture of inclusion as we believe the diversity of our skills and life experiences allow us to better serve our clients. With this in mind, our campuses around the world curated a programme of inspiring speakers, workshops and tours to highlight the opportunities that are available to women in the technology sector. Women across Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, United States and the United Kingdom had the opportunity to hear from women leaders across our organisations. Below are just some of the events that took place across our regions to celebrate International Women's Day: Brazil Brazil hosted an impressive panel of influential women both from within Experian and other organisations including: Banco Original and U.N. Women. The ‘Inspiring Girls in IT’ event was attended by girls from local schools as well relatives of Experian employees. “People used to say that IT was the future and I wanted to be economically independent,” said Hewlett Packard Bell’s Claudia Braga speaking at Experian’s Women in IT event in Brazil. The panel debate and workshops gave the girls an insight into career opportunities within IT as well as a chance to learn from woman who have already forged a successful career in the sector. Colombia As well as hosting an event for young women to learn more about technical careers, our Colombia office also released a special edition of its quarterly Credit Indicators Newsletter focusing on women and credit. One of the key findings from the report found that 1 in every 5 new credit lines is given to female micro- entrepreneurs — who doubled their loans in the real sector. There’s also a whopping 62% annual growth of revenue-generating credit products for women between the first quarter of 2015 and the third quarter of 2016.  “When it comes to credit and entrepreneurship in Colombia, we can certainly say the future is female,” said Mauricio Angulo, Experian’s managing director for Spanish LATAM. Costa Rica To celebrate International Women's Day, our Costa Rica campus invited four women from their IT department to share their stories on why they pursued a career in IT. The panel included: Lead de Quality Assurance and Compliance Tatiana Salazar; Software QA Analyst and President of Experian´s Employee Solidarist Association, Cindy Vargas; GSA Client Apps Manager, María Valverde; and Lead de Service and Delivery team, Monica Barrantes. England Four of our UK offices took the opportunity to celebrate International Women’s Day by holding local events as part of their 'Women in Experience' networks. In Nottingham, the team invited senior women for Experian to share their success stories with local girls; it was also a chance for the girls to find out more about Experian’s culture and career opportunities. The women in our EITS office held a lunch and learn session with young girls from the area to share job insights and offer advice on how to secure a position in the tech industry. As part of the celebration, the UK team also took the opportunity to sit down with some of the innovative women who work within Experian to glean some insight into how they overcame adversity in what is considered a male dominated industry. Laura Blackwell who works within our IT Service shared her advice on how women can secure a job in IT. “Stick to your guns, even in the face of adversity. If you enjoy doing IT, don’t let anything put you off achieving your dreams. It’s also a good idea to find a company to work for that will allow you the sort of flexibility to learn about different disciplines that I’ve found here at Experian.” United States Our team in Costa Mesa, California held a ‘Women in Experian' Expo, which included an executive speaker panel who shared their insights and thoughts on this year's event theme 'Be Bold for Change.' From awareness-raising to concrete action, attendees learned about how these executives demonstrated boldness in their careers to eliminate bias and foster inclusive work cultures. Hiq Lee, President of Experian’s Business Information Services Unit shared her own experiences on how she secured her role at Experian and offered some advice for young women in the audience on how to ask for workplace opportunities: “You are deserving of every opportunity,” said Hiq Lee, President of Experian’s Business Information Services Unit speaking to young women at Experian’s North American event. The IWD event in Costa Mesa was  streamed live on Periscope and clips from sessions from both Brazil and the United States were featured on Snapchat. The team in Allen, Texas encouraged Experian employees to bring their daughters, nieces and sisters to their ‘Future Female Technologists’ event. The panel included top female Experian employees to share their insights and expertise about how to pursue a career in technology. DeMarcus Brown, who works within Enterprise Systems Management, and Jessie Montano from our Firewall team provided an update to the girls on the range of Early Career options available at Experian. We’d like to thank all of our teams from across the globe for their commitment to helping women and girls achieve their ambitions. Our role in promoting gender equality is increasingly important and we will continue to dedicate our time and resources to help women lead.  

As part of Credit Awareness Week, Experian and Credit Strategy are launching a new credit refusal pathfinder to help people understand the lending process and how they can tackle a credit refusal. It can be a real pain when you make an unsuccessful credit application, especially when you can’t see why you were refused. “But I’ve got a good credit score!”, “But I pay all my bills on time!”, “But I don’t even have a credit card!” people may say. When you apply for a credit card, loan or even a mobile phone contract, it’s up to the lender to decide whether or not to offer you credit – and they have varying methods to work out if you’re eligible. New research from Credit Strategy, Experian and the CFA* has found a whopping 86% say that they should be offered a clearer explanation about why they have been declined credit. Many people completely misunderstand the credit-decision-making process; 26% of UK adults wrongly think the credit reference agency makes the decision to turn down applications for a loan, while 32% think credit reference agencies decide to approve credit cards. The reality is that lenders decide which customers to accept and refuse, with one or more credit reference agency simply providing information to help the decision. In fact, industry guidelines require lenders to tell people the main reason for refusing credit, but only if they ask. Does being refused credit affect your credit score? The research also found that 75% of the population think that being refused credit affects your credit score. Being refused for credit is not, in itself, hazardous for your credit score. While your credit report will show that you applied for a credit card – it stays on for a year – it won’t actually show whether or not you were accepted. However, credit refusal can often lead to more attempts to get credit – and making a lot of applications in a short space of time could have a serious impact on your credit score, and your ability to get credit in the future. Some common reasons to be refused credit: You’ve missed or made late credit payments recently, which show up on your credit report You’ve had a default or a CCJ in the past six years, which will show up on your credit report You’ve made too many credit applications in a short space of time in the past six months There are mistakes such as incorrect addresses or other errors on your application form You may not fall into the target bracket for the type of credit you’ve applied for Your Experian UK Credit Score tells you how lenders may view you, which is useful when you apply for credit – and is FREE FOREVER. The higher your credit score, the more chance of being accepted for credit, at the best rates. * Conducted by YouGov on behalf of Credit Strategy, Experian and the Consumer Finance Association (CFA), 10th – 13th March 2017

Globalization and technological innovation are changing the way Americans work. More and more, people are taking advantage of easy-to-use technology to take care of their day-to-day tasks, be they personal or work-related. While consumers have adapted to the new digital world and continuous progress in many aspects of their lives, their credit bureaus have been hard at work shifting and navigating to the new normal of frictionless technology tools on our personal devices that most of us are embracing. However, we have to acknowledge that even with some positive changes and advancements taking place in the lending industry, the lending process overall has not always kept pace with technology and consumer expectations, with applicants stuck pushing papers in application stages that can last almost 10 weeks. Aspirations for higher education that require a student loan, building or purchasing a home through a mortgage and realizing that next big innovative idea with a small business loan are hamstrung by a remnant of the 20th century – the paper-based loans processes. So today, Experian and Finicity are announcing a partnership that promises to transform the consumer and lender experience and bring it into the 21st century. By partnering with Finicity, we are leveraging our combined capabilities – their industry-leading 16,000 developed integrations throughout the financial services field and Experian’s Decisioning as a Service platform, to be the first credit bureau that can digitize the loan asset and income verification steps of the underwriting process for consumers and lenders. For consumers, this digital transformation of key steps of the loan underwriting process can mean increased time and money savings by helping to decrease the cost of lending. Loan approval speed can move up to 85 percent faster, taking the process from as many as 70 days to as few as 10 days. The access to faster lines of credit enables consumers to get the keys to their new home sooner and removes obstacles to opening a business. Instead of filling out, printing, photocopying and compiling document upon document, consumers need to only permission lenders to verify their income and assets. The new lending process also opens new opportunities for the millions of Americans who may be “credit invisible.” Tens of millions of Americans lack access to credit either because they haven’t ever accessed credit or have a weak credit history. Yet, most consumers have a checking and savings account, as well as other payment obligations such as rent, and utility and phone bills, which can demonstrate they are capable of repaying a loan. Finicity’s extensive integrations fill this gap by capturing alternative data, like on-time rental payments, utility bills and other non-traditional transaction information, which creates a more comprehensive picture of consumers. By looking at predictive alternative data, we are leveraging and harnessing the power of data to help underserved populations, including millennials, minorities and immigrants build their futures by accessing credit to start a business, obtain a mortgage or finance higher-education pursuits. What does this mean for lenders? It means providing customers with a better experience throughout the underwriting process and significantly reducing the risk of fraud with up-to-date, accurate information. In addition, Finicity is in a final pilot testing review to obtain Day 1 Certainty by Fannie Mae. With Day 1 Certainty, lenders can validate loan application data including income and assets upfront. The results are freedom from representations and warranties, more efficient risk management and a streamlined process. At Experian, we take charge of powering opportunities seriously. We take pride – but don’t rest on our laurels – in that we’re the industry leader in technological innovation to reduce pain points for consumers and build better products for our clients. We don’t innovate for innovation’s sake. Rather, we seek to leverage technology to help more people access better tomorrows. This partnership and the product stand to benefit millions people by facilitating access to credit for the first time for many. For all consumers, it will reduce the burden the formerly burdensome loan underwriting process – and speed the approval times. For lenders, we’re reducing occurrences of fraud and allowing them to more appropriately price risk. We’re continuing to lead by digitizing the credit bureau, and undoubtedly, this announcement will be joined by other announcements that we will be making in the near term. Revolutionizing the Home-Buying Journey Introducing Income & Asset Verification

I’m a Senior Vice President of Sales, responsible for leading Experian Health’s teams as they assist hospitals, physicians, labs and pharmacies across the U.S. We provide technology for providers and patients to help keep the costs and payment processing component of healthcare easy and transparent. The part of my work I am most passionate about, however, is our efforts to decrease identity theft in healthcare. Medical identity theft is one of the fastest growing areas of identity fraud in the world. With everything moving online at a fast pace, health care providers may not always keep up with the protections needed with new technologies. Unfortunately, that means hackers can sometimes acquire a patient’s personal information – name, Social Security number, health insurance number – to illegally obtain medical services or devices, insurance reimbursements or prescription drugs. One of the biggest issues with this type of fraud is that it leaves its victims with little to no recourse for recovery. They often experience financial repercussions and discover that faulty information has been added to their personal medical files as a result. To address this issue, my team and I partnered with Experian’s Decision Analytics team to create a new tool that protects patients’ online portals in much the same way that banks have protected their online clients for years. Additionally, our team is the in process of launching a Universal Identity Matching solution – a unique PIN which acts like the Social Security Number for your health care information. As more health care companies begin to adopt it, this PIN will be the one thing you will need to carry with you, as it will be your unique identifier for all your health care experiences. A lot of processes in hospitals today are still manual, but I want to change that. I want to automate systems so hospital staff can focus on where they are most needed. I am proud to work at a company that’s at the forefront of solving the major problems in healthcare IT. Being able to provide technological solutions in an industry where you can directly see the benefit is both personally and professionally rewarding. Read more #ExperianStories from our colleagues around the world.

In-kind donation of IntelliView data helps businesses plan and implement consumer programs Consumers will be empowered to repay debt and increase financial literacy One of our core brand beliefs at Experian is how we are using our data and analytics to help businesses and consumers. Once you can unlock the potential of that data for those involved, everyone around you can achieve even more. We strive to make a positive impact to consumers by getting involved with different charitable organizations in communities where we live and work through our Corporate Social Responsibly program to create success. With that as our backdrop, we are proud to announce a gift in kind of our IntelliViewSM data solution to InCharge Debt Solutions, a non profit financial counseling company that helps consumers get financial access. InCharge Debt Solutions will use Experian IntelliView data in their strategic planning process to help them gain a better understanding of macro industry trends and identify services that will most benefit the people they serve. “We really appreciate the IntelliViewSM data access from Experian. If we didn’t have this access we would have to do strategic planning in a much more blind way,” said Chris Henningsen, V.P. Consumer Awareness & IT at InCharge.  “The insight IntelliView brings helps us plan and implement programs that the people we serve most need to restore and improve their financial well-being.”” “We’re happy to offer InCharge access to our Intelliview solution to enable a proactive approach in providing advice to their clients to achieve greater financial success,” said Alan Ikemura, Experian senior product manager for Intelliview. InCharge Debt Solutions is a nonprofit organization offering confidential and professional credit counseling, debt management services, bankruptcy education, housing counseling and educational initiatives since 1997. With the assistance of certified credit counselors, the organization has helped over three million people repay a staggering $3 billion in debt and provided more than 10,000 free financial literacy community workshops. The $58,000 contribution is just one of the many ways Experian supports financial literacy and unlocks the power of data to transform lives and create opportunities for consumers, businesses, and society. Learn more about how Experian’s Corporate Social Responsibly team is helping Experian make a real impact in our communities.