The social benefits of our core products

Experian provides powerful information to enable organisations as well as individual consumers to make better decisions. Our products and services are often unseen in the background, but they make an important contribution to successful economies and thriving societies. At the heart of what we do are a number of socially beneficial outcomes:

• We are essential facilitators of the credit process. In the past three decades we have seen a credit revolution. Thirty years ago credit was difficult to obtain as lenders tried hard to minimise their risks. The consequence was often that credit was only available to the better-off families who were already established financially. Now, thanks to improved data and risk analysis tools, credit granters are able to offer facilities much more widely, making credit available to many more people in society. A well-managed and fairly regulated credit system is essential to the expansion of emerging economies and Experian has a tradition of taking the best practice it has learned in well developed markets and adapting it for use in emerging and developing economies.
  
  
• At the same time, we play an essential role in reducing financial costs. Our data and tools helps financial institutions minimise their losses, which has a knock-on effect for the costs of borrowing. Ultimately, the whole of society benefits as interest rates are kept low.
  
  
• Experian is a leader in combating financial fraud, particularly through identity-theft and similar scams. By controlling fraud levels we reduce losses for individual victims, which can be a costly and distressing experience. We also reduce losses for providers: fraud can often be seen as a victimless crime as individual consumers eventually recover their losses, but the ultimate effect for all is higher costs, again driving up the cost of capital. Driving down fraud again reduces cost.
  
  
• Much of what we do increases efficiency. This is an essential benefit for all commercial clients, but when that increase is for a public body, enabling it to target its services better and make its resources go further there is a big social impact. Even for commercial clients there can be real social benefits. For example, better targeting of marketing can reduce junk mail, and building a store in exactly the right spot for its target customers minimises travel and mileage overall.

Follow these links to see some case studies illustrating the social impact of our core products and services.

Key:

Facilitating credit

Reducing financial costs

Combating financial fraud

Increasing efficiency

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