Data is the new oil of the information age, powering many digital technologies and services today. Like oil, data needs to be significantly refined in order to unlock its true potential – actionable insights for better decisioning.

At the 2019 Singapore Fintech Festival, Experian’s Ben Moreau, Innovation & Strategy Director, X Labs, and Gaurav Kumar, Principal Data Scientist, X Labs shared how Experian is spearheading change in Asia Pacific with proactive, continuous innovation, using cutting edge technology and data science to derive insights from data to solve challenges for underserved communities and also mature economies.

The Reality of the Underserved Markets

Being excluded from formal banking systems poses several financial disadvantages, one of which is the lack of banking data required to construct a credit history or profile, a prerequisite for loans.

A good case in point is Indonesia. With more than half of a 264 million strong population being unbanked, the country is characterised by low levels of credit bureau coverage, limiting financial institutions’ ability to accurately access risk profile. This has resulted in unmet demand for credit, preventing consumers from fulfilling their aspirations due to a lack of access to the necessary capital.

Data as the Equaliser for Financial Access

Experian has long recognised the transformational potential of data, and have focused our efforts into harnessing alternative sources of data to empower consumers with financial access.

Our approach to enhancing financial accessibility is centered around the use of non-traditional data at scale for credit scoring, allowing organisations to determine the credit worthiness of individuals when bureau data is limited or unavailable.

We have established partnerships with telecommunications network providers around the world, building a global ecosystem of alternate data. User behaviour such as calling patterns and app usage may all be utilised to create an individual’s credit profile, known as Experian X Score, which may then be used as a reference for financial institutions. Leveraging machine learning capabilities to boost predictive power, Experian analyses telco data of users across several dimensions, translating it into behavioural patterns to build a risk profile aimed at increasing users’ success rates for loans.

Open Banking at the Next Generation of Opportunity

Open banking is gaining traction in economies such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. This practice enables customers to share their transactional banking data with trusted third parties, creating new opportunities for data-driven decisioning, some of which include tailored recommendations and frictionless customer integration or onboarding.

What sets us apart from industry counterparts is our experience of successful open banking implementation in markets such as United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.

We used APIs to build services with machine learning capabilities to analyse customer authorised transactional data. This provides extensive insights into a true single customer view that can be leveraged for hyper-personalised recommendations.

Experian’s open banking experience is largely aimed at instilling better financial management. As a consumer, one of the most frustrating aspects of credit card use is the lack of a standardised manner a charge can appear on a statement, often resulting in confusion. We combine banking transactional data and our machine learning capabilities to accurately match transactions to our database of more than 1.2 million card accepting merchants across the country. This enables Experian to provide additional information on transactions for up to 150 different fields including trading name, spend category, merchant logo and contact details, significantly transforming the customer experience.

In the United Kingdom, where 16 million individuals are estimated to hold credit card debt. Our research indicated that customer inertia was a key contributor to the problem, and that individuals became motivated to resolve the issue when shown a solution. Our platform consolidates the total debt of an individual, and provides tailored debt servicing recommendations.

Collaboration being the Key to Success

With a growing presence across 44 countries, Experian remains invested in helping organisations and startups to enhance their ability to boost the user experience journey and consumer experience with technology, and scaling our capabilities to drive greater credit access through alternative data.

Experian joins the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network

Coinciding with the Singapore Fintech Festival 2019, we are pleased to be part of the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network, established by the ASEAN Bankers Association, International Finance Corporation and Monetary Authority of Singapore. Being part of the Strategic Advisory Council, we are able to support the development of APIX - API Exchange, to collaborate with other council members to shape the financial innovation ecosystem, and accelerate our vision of driving greater financial inclusion across the region.

Learn More about Experian X Labs