Bringing financial health to all

Financial health can transform people’s lives. Our products, people and partnerships are already helping millions of people improve their financial health, enabling them to get fairer access to credit and the essentials they need to transform their lives.

Why it matters

Credit can open the door to life-changing opportunities — from having a home or building a business to paying for education and healthcare. This social and economic development helps lift people out of poverty and improves quality of life. But financial health challenges mean millions of people globally are missing out on these opportunities:

One in four adults worldwide still lack access to basic financial services

Lack of knowledge about good financial management makes credit problems worse

Credit profiles are at risk from the growing threat of fraud and identity theft

Many of those who do have access to financial services still can’t get fair, affordable credit

The UN SDGs

The United Nations identifies access to financial services, including credit and microfinance, among its sustainable development goals (SDGs). We’re working hard to help achieve this and put particular focus on SDGs 1, 8 and 9.

UN Sustainable Development Goal Icon 1 - End poverty in all its forms everywhere

1.4

UN Sustainable Development Goal Icon 8 - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

8.10

UN Sustainable Development Goal Icon 9 - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

9.3

How we're doing it

Financial inclusion

Increasing access to financial services 

Financial education

Improving financial literacy and confidence 

Financial management

Helping people manage their financial lives 

Financial security

Preventing fraud and identity theft 

Three ways we improve financial health

Core products

Many of our core products contribute to improving people’s financial health — either directly through our consumer services business or indirectly through solutions for clients, such as for lenders.

Social innovation

Developing products to provide additional societal benefits as a priority.

Community investment

Investing in community support, including our flagship United for Financial Health financial education programme.

Using our core products to improve financial health

Our main business plays a critical role in collecting and analysing data to provide lenders with the information they need — so they can decide whether to offer credit, and at what rate, by assessing how likely someone is to pay back a loan.

168m

consumers with free membership to our platforms for free education and access to products

1.5bn

people have profiles in Experian’s credit bureaux

US$12bn

in fraud was prevented by our core products this year

Our core products and services support financial health by helping people:

Improve credit visibility

Improve credit visibility

Experian Go helps people in the United States who have no credit history to establish their financial identity in minutes.

Boost credit scores

Boost credit scores

Experian Boost allows UK and U.S. consumers to instantly add positive data — such as on-time bill payments — directly to their credit profile.

Understand and manage finances

Understand and manage finances

Worldwide, 168 million people use our free online services to help them understand and manage their credit profiles.

Protect against fraud

Protect against fraud

Our Consumer Services products help individuals spot potentially fraudulent transactions in their credit profiles. We also enable Experian members in Brazil, the USA – and now the UK – to lock their profiles to reduce the risk of identity theft and fraud.

Get the best offers

Get the best offers

Our credit marketplaces in Brazil, Spanish Latin America, the UK and the USA make it easier for consumers to access credit by connecting them with credit offers from a range of lenders through a central portal.

Mother and two kids infront of their home in the US

Case study: Empowering tenants to boost credit scores

Millions of Americans cannot access affordable credit because their credit profiles are too thin for lenders to make an informed decision about whether they will repay a loan. Experian Boost, launched in 2019, gives consumers the option to add positive data – such as on-time payments from utility bills or streaming services – to their Experian profiles to instantly improve their credit score. We have now taken it a big step further by enabling tenants to add their rent too. Online rental payments made to select property management companies or platforms are now eligible for Boost. Hundreds of thousands of consumers have already added rent tradelines to their credit file, increasing their FICO® Score by an average of 13 points.

Using social innovation to improve financial health

Our teams across Experian can apply for seed funding to develop products designed to meet a specific societal need, as well as generate new revenue streams for our business.

Helping people thrive through our social innovation products:

106m

people reached since 2013

100m

people targeted by 2025

Our established social innovation products are already helping people:

Prove identity

Prove identity

Prove-ID Link, designed to help financially excluded people in India verify their identity, has been integrated into our mainstream CrossCore identity authentication platform.

Build credit profiles

Build credit profiles

In Brazil, we have launched our Smallholders Marketplace help smallholder farmers get better access to financial services by building a scoring system and risk index specifically designed to help lenders assess their creditworthiness.

Access affordable loans

Access affordable loans

We connect consumers with affordable loans by including offers from nonprofit lenders, such as credit unions, on price-comparison websites.

Improve financial confidence

Improve financial confidence

In South Africa, our Up platform offers brands a way to provide consumers with relevant content and give them access to financial education. 

Manage debts

Manage debts

Our Limpa Nome Recovery Portal has enabled tens of millions of people in Brazil to collectively write off over US$21 billion of debt since 2013 by renegotiating unmanageable debts.

Manage healthcare costs

Manage healthcare costs

Our social innovation healthcare products have reached more than 31 million people in the USA to date, helping people understand and manage medical costs or connecting them to financial assistance.

Young black girl walking

Case study: Helping vulnerable customers share their support needs

People with some form of vulnerability, including disability or mental health challenges, can face barriers in using products and services. This can be detrimental to their financial health, even leading to financial loss, as a result of missing payments or mismanagement of accounts. Our Support Hub is helping vulnerable consumers share their support needs with multiple organisations in a transparent, standardised and consented way – all in a matter of minutes so that they can get on with their lives. Developed with consumers, companies, charities and vulnerability experts, the solution is free and easy to use, and follows best practice guidelines for accessibility.

Using community investment to improve financial health

We invested US$18 million in programmes to support our communities this year, and our people volunteered 47,000 hours in their communities. We channelled much of this support through our United for Financial Health partnerships with NGOs that offer targeted financial education to empower vulnerable communities.

26m

connections made through our United for Financial Health programme this year

113m

connections since 2020

100m

targeted by 2024

Our United for Financial Health non-profit partners include:

Singleton Foundation (USA)

Singleton Foundation (USA)

We partnered with the Singleton Foundation to sponsor a new reality series, HeartBroke, which explores the effect money has on relationships and what can be done about it.

Sebrae (Brazil)

Sebrae (Brazil)

We created a content platform with Sebrae to help small business entrepreneurs in Brazil improve their financial management.

National Numeracy (UK)

National Numeracy (UK)

We continue to support National Numeracy’s Number Confidence Week, National Numeracy Day and Checktember, and partnered to create the UK’s first Numeracy Index.

Srujna Charitable Trust (India)

Srujna Charitable Trust (India)

Working with Srujna we aim to equip 50,000 women affected by poverty, many of whom have low levels of financial literacy and little or no access to basic financial services, or tools to manage, budget, or save to improve the quality of their life.

Microlab association (Italy)

Microlab association (Italy)

We partnered with Microlab to build our IncludiMi (‘include me’) website, which offers a free test for unbanked and vulnerable people in Italy to gauge their ability to manage their finances, and offer free courses and videos on how to manage money.

The Big Issue employee talking to a member of the public

Case study: Partnering on financial Community investment in action with The Big Issue education

For over 30 years, UK social enterprise The Big Issue has empowered people hit by poverty and homelessness to earn a living by selling its magazine. For around 2,000 vendors – who may face rough sleeping, housing issues, physical and mental health problems, challenges with substance misuse or have limited employment skills – selling the magazine is a lifeline that provides badly needed income and experience. We partnered with The Big Issue to develop an eight-module training toolkit – available in English and Romanian – to help its magazine vendors get to grips with the basics of managing money and using digital technology. Over 23% of vendors have already engaged with the toolkit.

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