How Experian Consumer Products use AI
What is AI?
The aim of artificial intelligence (AI) is to make computers and machines smarter. The goal is to create computers and software that can solve problems like a human can, by learning and reasoning.
Chances are, AI is already part of your everyday life. For example smartphones may use AI to help you take better photos, or when a streaming service recommends movies or music you might like - that could be AI too.
Why does Experian use AI?
In short, to improve our service and make your life easier! Like countless organisations with large numbers of users, we use AI when it can make things faster, easier, or more accurate. But we only use it in specific circumstances, which we detail below.
How does Experian use AI?
The AI we use with customer data is at the simpler end of the scale, and is based on established machine learning models. It is built to, among other things, improve the user experience without directly impacting on our customers legal rights or obligations.
All uses of AI that involve your personal data are explained in our privacy policy, and wherever possible we remove personal identifiers when using the data.
Let's take a look at the key ways we use AI to help improve things for our customers:
When you log in, we try to personalise your experience where possible. We do this by predicting how likely you'll be interested in different features. For example, if you have a perfect credit score, you probably won't be interested in ways to improve your score.
We also use predictions to help us send more helpful emails. For instance, if you tend to open our emails in the morning, we're more likely to email you in the morning.
To protect peoples' accounts, we use a range of fraud detection measures. Device information, online activity (such as page clicks) and other data is used to help identify, predict and stop fraud.
If you use Experian Boost, you'll be able to connect your current account(s) via Open Banking. We use current account data going back up to 12 months to see if we can improve your Experian Credit Score and help you get a better deal on credit applications.
Our tools look for payments into savings and investments, Council Tax, and subscriptions - plus the total amount paid in and out. We then use this information to see if your Experian Credit Score could get a boost. You'll be able to see your boost and a consolidated view of the transactions we've used.
Connecting to Boost will never be the cause of your Experian Credit Score going down. Find out more about how Boost works.
To help us provide better content, we segment our customers into different groups. Because when it comes to managing your finances, different people need different things.
For example, we sometimes group customers together by credit rating (such as those with an Excellent, Good, Fair, and so on, credit score). This helps us provide information that's relevant to you, and strip out the stuff that isn't. So you don't waste time hearing about products designed for people with a completely different score.
Your Experian Credit Score is based on how you've borrowed and managed money in the past. It uses information in your Experian Credit Report - like how often you apply for credit, how much you owe, and whether you make payments on time. These insights are brought together to create your score.
The Experian Credit Report has been used to calculate credit scores for many years. It will always be a crucial part of your financial health. But we're constantly looking at ways we can improve our services and make finance fairer, simpler and safer for everyone. This is why we've developed innovations such as Experian Boost.