Credit insight

It can be tricky getting hold of customers.  Smart tracing systems like Experian’s Supertrace cross-reference a range of customer and organisational data to help you verify a customer’s contact details and alert you if they change.

Around 2.6 million people in the UK have moved home in recent times - that’s 11% of the entire population. Understandably, in the hustle and bustle of moving, some forget to tell their credit providers about their new address, resulting in ‘lost’ customers. Contact tracing systems allow you to quickly establish new addresses and phone numbers for your customers.

Cross-checking solutions provide a greater degree of accuracy than was previously possible. This enables you to know you’re dealing with the right customer and ensure all communications are appropriate and compliant.

When investigating tracing solutions for your business, look for ones that let you check which sources have been used to pinpoint a customer’s address. Experian’s Supertrace, for example, offers a summary of its data that includes a residency score, common occupancy data (i.e. the people they live with) and Land Registry property ownership details.

Data-driven credit-decisioning systems ensure that assessments are both fast and fair. They also reduce friction in the processing of applications, which increases overall uptake of credit offers by up to 10%.

Implementing automated decision-making solutions lead to fewer manual checks, which helps speed up the process and lessen costs. Experian’s Affordability Solutions, for example, has been shown to reduce the volume of customers going through manual review by 30%.

The best credit decision software validates income data supplied by an applicant. Personalised bureau insight, like that provided by Experian’s Affordability IQ, can seamlessly validate a customer’s income to gain a greater understanding of their financial well-being.

Income is only part of the equation; you also need to have proof of an applicant’s current expenditure to gauge the level of credit they can afford. This process is made simple using Open Banking protocols, which lets you see consenting customers’ bank transactions in real time.

Automated decisioning systems are available all day, every day, so they’re ready when your customers need them. The lack of any manual intervention also makes the system fast and frictionless, which improves acceptance rates and drive down costs. 

Choosing a cloud-based service means there’s no lengthy deployment process. Implementation occurs in days and weeks, not months or years. Updates also occur automatically, reducing the burden on in-house IT teams. 

The best automated systems allow you to tailor the credit approvals process to meet your needs. Experian’s PowerCurve Customer Acquisition, for instance, enables you to create your own policy rules, parameters and segments.

Automated approvals tools enable you to plug in various data sources to underpin lending decisions. In addition to your own in-house data, Experian can also give you access to bureau and commercial data to further mitigate lending risks.

Another benefit of using automated decisioning tools is that lending applications are treated fairly. Better information ensures that you only ever lend responsibly and sustainably, and to customers who can afford to pay back the sums borrowed.

It’s important you’re able to see how different operational approaches could influence future profit and revenue goals throughout your organisation or across particular segments of your customer base. Armed with the right tools, you can evaluate multiple scenarios, examine the trade-offs and determine which strategy is best across the entire business even in the face of competing goals and priorities.

Experian's Work Report is a quick, simple and secure way for customers to share their verified employment and income information with the organisations they choose, directly from an employer’s payroll database in seconds. 

Streamlining your applications process Work Report provides the seamless digital experience your customers want with no payslips to manually collect, verifying income and employment in seconds so you can make informed decisions, quicker. 

And as data is from source the opportunity of fraud is eliminated, capacity is increased, and you can accept more customers online with no additional risk. 

Make the move to digital verification and say goodbye to paper payslips and hello to better, faster decisions that benefit your customers – and you.

While it’s important to build profits, remaining compliant is crucial, too. Credit risk strategy tools, such as Experian’s Marketswitch Optimisation, square the circle of adapting to and satisfying regulatory constraints at the same time as optimising profits.

How can you ensure your risk strategy takes into account individual practices and circumstances? By grouping customers into segments based on similar traits and behaviours it’s possible to predict future risks for each segment with more accuracy.

When it comes to making lending decisions, you need a credible source of current information about your customer’s financial situation. A product like Experian Retro draws data from the Live Credit Bureau to give you an accurate insight into the finances of new clients.

This data can also help you check the affordability of a given product to see whether it’s suitable for a particular customer in their present circumstances - you can also use it to target new business prospects.  

Data from the Live Credit Bureau helps inform your overall strategy. Use it to underpin the variables and scorecards you build as well as to enhance capital modelling. It also lets you construct loss forecasts using the most up-to-date data possible.