Experian Sustainable Business Report 2020 Highlights Financial Recovery Solutions, Carbon Neutral Commitment

LONDON, July 9, 2020 - Experian has published its annual Sustainable Business Report 2020, outlining the Group’s commitment to social and environmental issues, as well as details of its corporate responsibility performance.

The Sustainable Business Report 2020 highlights Experian’s target to reach an additional 100 million people globally by 2025 with social innovation products and services[1].This programme includes several noteworthy initiatives which are already underway including:

• The Recovery Portal (Limpa Nome), which has helped more than 14 million consumers in Brazil renegotiate their debts.
• The Prove ID-Link which has helped more than 15 million people in India to prove their identity, so that they can open a bank account and access credit for the first time.

The Sustainable Business Report also highlights Experian’s ambition to become carbon neutral by 2030 - recognising the urgent need for more businesses to accelerate their response to climate change. Reducing the footprint of offices and data centres using renewable energy, the carbon impact of business travel, and investment in high quality carbon offsetting projects, have been identified as essential steps to help achieve the ambitious target.

In the last year, Experian has managed to reduce its absolute carbon footprint by 8% – from 47.7 to 43.7 thousand tonnes of CO2e – and cut the carbon intensity of the business by 14% per US$1,000 of revenue compared with the previous year. This was achieved through improved energy efficiency in its buildings, along with the consolidation of offices. 29% of Experian’s worldwide energy was also renewable.

Charles Brown, Company Secretary at Experian, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fundamental importance of data as we tackle this unprecedented challenge. We are proud of the way our people and business have stepped up to provide broader help in this time of crisis.

We have a role to play in helping societies recover, and we are leading the way in providing education, advice and free tools to consumers as well as significant and valuable help to governments across the world.”

Other key takeaways from this year’s Sustainability Reports:

• Experian employees volunteered 54,500 hours in and outside of work time to support their communities. This included over 3,500 hours in March 2020 to support communities as the COVID-19 crisis took hold.
• In Brazil, Experian has supported the introduction of new legislation enabling millions of consumers to benefit from the use of ‘positive’ data about the credit and other bills they pay on time.
• Experian Boost helped over 1.5 million Americans improve their credit scores, collectively boosting their FICO® scores by more than 17 million points.
• This year, our Social Innovation programme reached 14 million additional people with our products and services.

You can read the full Sustainable Business Report 2020 on the Experian plc Website.

[1] since re-launch of the social innovation programme in 2013.