How can financial institutions use data and technology to transform their credit, fraud and analytics operations? To help answer these points, Digital Journal spoke with Alex Lintner, the CEO of Experian Software Solutions.
Digital Journal: What are some of the challenges lenders face when managing their operations in credit, fraud, and analytics?
Alex Lintner: At the heart of it, lenders want to ensure a positive experience for their customers that results in a mutually beneficial relationship. However, how this is accomplished is a series of data and technology inputs that involve verifying identities to prevent fraud, ensuring proper risk assessments for fair and equitable access to credit, automated decisioning, proper communication with consumers, and much more.
This entire process takes the right data and technology to ensure a seamless customer experience. Typically, financial institutions buy software solutions from many different vendors, leverage a variety of tools and applications across different cloud environments and go through rigorous and time-consuming processes to stitch everything together. This fragmented approach inflates costs, extends timelines, and elevates risk. On top of that, it stretches teams thin – keeping them from driving growth and focusing on their customers.
DJ: How is Experian helping lenders overcome these challenges?
Lintner: Clients told us they wanted integrated solutions that could provide a seamless user experience and enable greater agility. We brought together our best-in-class data, superior analytics and cutting-edge technology to do just that with our Experian Ascend Technology Platform. The consolidated platform allows our clients to simplify the integration and usability of the solution, scale across departments and geographies, while also enhancing automation.
We are currently focusing on use cases related to fraud, credit decisioning, and analytics, but the possibilities here are much broader. In essence, the platform is helping clients stop fraudsters faster, automate the deployment of custom features and models, enhance security, fight data scientist burnout and much more. This type of sophisticated and synchronized experience has been elusive to the financial services sector, but we are changing this dynamic with our platform approach.
DJ: What do these enhancements mean for consumers?
Lintner: While we think of Experian Ascend Technology Platform as a B2B solution, we put the consumer at the center of all we do at Experian and believe, by modernizing the technology used in financial services, we can create better outcomes for consumers. One way we’re achieving this is by helping lenders overcome the challenges associated with leveraging the latest advancements in data and technology. For example, we know there are over 100 million Americans who lack access to credit either because they are credit invisible, unscorable or have a subprime credit score.
Ninety-five percent of lenders are using advanced analytics to stay ahead and best serve consumers. This is a good thing for consumers, however it presents some challenges for lenders. As models become more sophisticated, deployment timelines and costs can increase. In fact, our research shows, it takes 15 months on average to build a model for credit decisioning and 55% of lenders have built models that have not made it to production. But this no longer has to be the case. Our platform automates the deployment of custom features and models – moving them into production in a matter of days, allowing lenders to make more informed decisions and create new opportunities for consumers much more quickly.
DJ: How does Experian’s platform leverage AI?
Lintner: Experian is at the forefront of the AI revolution. We’ve created a robust set of technical capabilities within our Ascend Technology Platform. These tools democratize access to AI tools for our clients and Experian developers or data scientists retained by our clients for their projects.
Early feedback from our clients suggests that the platform’s integrated capabilities will streamline operations and help remove complexities. Experian is committed to responsible AI as it enhances the utility and efficiency of the platform by driving improved productivity and reducing system costs.
DJ: Can you share any success stories or case studies of organizations that have utilized the Ascend Technology platform effectively?
Lintner: I’m proud to say that Experian’s platform is being leveraged by more than 1,500 clients globally, processing 14 million credit reports daily and billions of credit and fraud transactions per year now. In North America alone, over 8,000 registered users from 80 clients access over 12 petabytes of data weekly for analytical purposes.
For example, Lendr, a specialized fintech offering contemporary financing solutions for small businesses, is harnessing the power of the platform to enhance competitiveness and informed decision-making. By utilizing Experian’s platform Lendr has significantly bolstered its agility and competitive edge. It’s helped Lendr deliver scalability so it can be nimble, compete effectively and mitigate losses. The result? It’s ultimately helped Lendr double its business over the past year.
In conclusion, the evolution of our platform and its streamlining capabilities represent a significant leap forward in lending technology for companies. It democratizes access to data in compliant ways while enabling lenders of all sizes to seamlessly validate their customers’ identities with confidence, helps expand fair access to credit, and offers unparalleled user and customer experiences.
