Educating and empowering consumers

Over the past 15 years we have developed large scale consumer education programmes in the US and UK, designed to help consumers understand how credit works, to encourage them to regularly check their credit reports, and to explain Experian’s role. Work is underway to introduce similar programmes in other countries where Experian has a presence. In Germany, for example, we are liaising with government and consumer representatives to ensure that consumers understand the benefits of credit and behavioural scoring. In the UK and US we work with a range of partners, including educators, journalists, regulators, money advice specialists, consumer and privacy organisations’ and lenders to ensure these programmes reach millions of consumers through a variety of media.

Our US Ask Max column successfully pioneered the idea of an online consumer advice service. The column has been a huge success: we have now published more than 260 columns over a 10 year period, answering 1,040 of the most frequent and unique submissions.

In the UK, Jill Stevens, Director of Consumer Affairs, runs a similar column, ‘Ask Jill’, which has been available for UK consumers now for four years. It enables consumers to search for the answer to their query in an archive. She also provides an advice column for The Times Online and for several of Experian’s Interactive business partners.

We produce a range of consumer information leaflets and advice guides, which are available from independent advice centres, various websites and can be ordered by phone or fax. This year in the UK we have produced several new publications including a booklet about how to avoid and deal with identity fraud and a fact sheet dispelling some credit report myths. In the US, we introduced Spanish language translations of our popular Reports on Credit series and a 12 Common Questions about Consumer Credit and Direct Marketing booklet.

Over the past year we distributed more than 120,000 advice leaflets in the UK and 50,000 in the US. Many of those distributed in the US were designed to be copied; educators and businesses subsequently reproduced them in large quantities for use in their classrooms and customer outreach programmes. In the UK more than one million Credit Crossroads consumer help leaflets have been distributed since 2000.

Much of our recent consumer education work has been focused on helping young people understand the basics of budgeting, credit and debt, to prepare them for later life. During 2006, we launched a new UK schools pack called Getting Credit: a beginner’s guide that includes six, one-hour lesson plans for teachers and a range of supporting materials. The pack has been awarded a quality mark from pfeg, the UK’s specialist personal finance education charity and is being widely used in schools up and down the country. In addition, we sponsored a Times 100 business studies course featuring an informative Experian case study and this reached tens of thousands of students.

An important element of our US public education programme is to extend the reach of our resources by “training the trainers.” A partnership with the Dallas Federal Reserve branch proved to be a highly successful example of this philosophy.

During the summer of 2006, as required by new state laws, the Dallas Fed was asked to prepare teachers to teach personal finance concepts in Texas schools. Experian participated as a partner in a series of training programs across the state, attended by several hundred teaching staff. Those teachers are now sharing valuable information about credit and credit reporting with thousands of students, and will do so in subsequent years. Over time, tens of thousands of young people in Texas will receive the information as a result of this single programme.

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