Our products and programmes are already improving financial inclusion and financial health for millions of people around the world. We see great potential to help more people thrive on their financial journeys. Doing so will help us grow our business and the value we create for society.
We aim to improve the financial health of people across the globe through our core products, Social Innovation programme and community investment initiatives. We also channel innovation for financial health through our DataLabs and our global hackathons. See our Improving Financial Health Report for more.
Core products
Through our data and analytics, we give lenders the information they need to offer more loans at fairer rates. This in turn enables people to improve their financial health.
Core products like Experian Boost can help consumers enhance their credit scores by adding positive data – such as on-time payments from utility bills or streaming services – to their profiles. In the USA, 72 million points have been added to Experian members’ credit scores through Experian Boost over the last three years. This year, we helped 40,000 consumers build new credit profiles following the launch of Experian Go (see page 55) and we are developing The Buy Now Pay Later Bureau to help more US consumers with no or thin credit files gain access to fair, affordable financial services.
As well as empowering consumers to improve their scores directly, we have also continued working with lenders to improve financial inclusion through products like Experian Lift that do not rely on mainstream credit data alone. By combining advanced analytics, additional Fair Credit Reporting Act-regulated datasets and machine learning, Lift Premium enables lenders to enhance the accuracy of credit risk scores for 96% of US adults, with the potential to score 65% of ‘credit invisibles’. In the UK, more than 14,000 consumers were able to access loans they would otherwise have been declined for in a trial this year of our new toolkit to help lenders identify and support vulnerable consumers.
Worldwide, 134 million consumers use our free platforms to access products and services that can help them understand and manage their credit profiles. Our consumer services also help individuals spot potentially fraudulent transactions in their credit profiles, and we offer a range of solutions to help lenders and other clients prevent fraud. This year, our core fraud and identity theft products are estimated to have prevented at least US$11bn in fraud for our clients, and across the Group fraud and identity products generated 11% of our business revenue.
Social innovation
Our social innovation products, specifically designed to offer additional societal benefits as well as generating revenue for our business, reached a further 21 million people this year. They have reached 82 million people to date, well on our way to our target of 100 million by 2025. Since 2013, these products have generated US$162m in revenue from a total investment of over US$9m.
Two of the earliest social innovation products we funded continue to deliver significant impact. In Brazil, the Limpa Nome debt recovery portal has enabled 32 million people to write off more than US$14bn worth of debts to date. In India, Prove ID-Link is designed to help financially excluded people to verify their identity. It has reached 25 million people since launch and has now been integrated into our mainstream CrossCore identity authentication platform.
In Asia Pacific, PowerScore has supported more than five million applications for credit products, since its launch in Indonesia last year, by giving millions of people a credit profile for the first time. In the USA, our social innovation healthcare products have reached more than eight million people to date and our Social Media Insights have helped more than 2.6 million small businesses, allowing many to qualify for better insurance terms by using alternative data points such as strong social media engagement.
This year, we invested in the development of three new social innovation products that aim to provide credit scores to millions of consumers in Asia Pacific for the first time; empower vulnerable consumers in the UK; and enable better access to credit for smallholders in Brazil.
Community investment
Our total contributions reached US$15.9m this year. This is the first time we have surpassed our goal of 1% of Benchmark profit before tax (PBT), and our intention in future years is to maintain this proportionate level of contributions to benefit the communities in which we operate.
Our employees volunteered 25,000 hours of their time (in and outside working hours) to help their communities, despite COVID-19 restrictions continuing to limit opportunities for face-to-face volunteering.
This year, we continued our United for Financial Health partnerships to provide targeted financial education – for microentrepreneurs in Brazil, young people in the UK and Ireland, and marginalised communities in the USA – including a YouTube series hosted by Grammy Award-winning recording artist Lecrae that reached over 10 million people. We also expanded United for Financial Health into EMEA, with new partnerships that focus on reaching credit invisibles in Italy and small businesses in South Africa.
Our flagship United for Financial Health programme has connected with over 87 million people since it launched in 2020 and we are on track to meet our target of 100 million by 2024. Through partnerships with NGOs across our regions, the programme is using financial education to empower diverse communities.