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A recent study shows that small-business credit conditions remained relatively unchanged in Q1 2016, as delinquency and bankruptcy rates held steady at low levels. Much of the slight decrease in delinquencies was driven by fewer small businesses falling within the 61 to 90 and 91+ days past-due categories. Gaining deeper insight into the health of small businesses is important for both lenders and small-business owners. Experian® provides market-leading tools that enable small businesses to find new customers, process new applications, manage customer relationships and collect on delinquent accounts. >> Q1 2016 report  

Part 2 in our series on Insights from the Vision 2016 fraud and identity track With the growing number of data breach incidents taking place the stolen data from those attacks is being used to carry out social engineering attacks used to commit call center fraud. A recent study stated that global call center fraud has increased more than 45% in the last three years as fraudsters use social engineering to steal data and turn profits. The same report found that criminals might make up to 5 calls to a center, pretending to be the victim, before completing a fraudulent transaction. The importance of  strong call center authentication procedures is greater than ever. At the 35th annual Vision Conference, Bobbie Paul from Experian’s Global Consulting Practice, Stefan Schubert from JPMorgan Chase and I led a session about call center authentication. After introductions and a discussion about existing call center identity authentication techniques, Stefan took the podium and provided an excellent overview of how his company approaches call center authentication. He made an interesting point — despite introducing friction into his process, he was not of the opinion that knowledge-based authentication (KBA) was going away any time soon because of how deeply it is embedded into their processes and its applicability to most consumers. He also called out the importance of reviewing KBA configurations regularly to adjust which questions are being asked and the positive implication to deterring fraudsters. Bobbie followed Stefan to discuss emerging call center authentication technologies, including a new take on an old tool — document imaging. She also discussed the notion of phone printing, which does not specifically evaluate the voice on the phone, but looks at the characteristics of the call itself, including the type of phone being used and the environment from which the call is being made. One of the highlights of the session was the interaction with the audience — including a demonstration of how, with a little distraction, it was easy to walk away with an audience member’s phone, how a fraudster could access and compromise a phone and how a gummy bear could be used to defeat fingerprint biometrics. What I, and many others, took away from this is that even with newer fraud detection tools available, incorporating tried-and-true methods like KBA is still an important step into a holistic fraud detection strategy.

Industry’s first smart plug-and-play fraud platform allows companies to connect their own solutions, Experian products and third-party vendors in one place to better protect their customers from fraud threats Experian unveiled the fraud and identity industry’s first open platform designed to catch fraud faster, improve compliance and enhance the customer experience. Experian’s CrossCore™ gives companies an easier way to connect any new or existing tools and systems in one place, whether they are Experian, internal or third-party partner solutions. This “plug-and-play” capability allows companies to rapidly adapt to changing conditions and risks. “Our clients have expressed frustration over the lack of a truly holistic industry solution that delivers the level of confidence and control they need without requiring a massive multiyear project to replace everything they have,” said Steve Platt, global executive vice president, Fraud and Identity, Experian. “New fraud threats, updates to regulatory requirements and customer expectations for a hassle-free experience are making it challenging for fraud and compliance teams to keep up. CrossCore will give them the flexibility they need to balance customer protection with customer experience.” The CrossCore open platform enables organizations to manage services through a common access point that supports a layered approach to managing risks across providers. CrossCore includes powerful workflow and strategy design capabilities that allow fraud and compliance teams to create and adapt strategies based on evolving threats and business needs. This helps them to respond more quickly and reduces the burden on IT. Fraud and compliance teams must constantly respond to new fraud threats and changing regulatory requirements by implementing new tools on top of existing solutions. “A layered approach is imperative, because fraudsters can break through each layer individually, but they will face greater barriers with each additional layer imposed,” said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst, Security and Privacy, of Gartner.[1] Over time, as layers have been added and fortified, systems have become increasingly complex, expensive to integrate and difficult to manage, often increasing customer friction. A key feature of the CrossCore fraud platform is the ease of integration with third-party partner solutions. At launch, CrossCore will support fraud and identity services provided by third-party partners, including Acxiom® (Identity Solutions), TeleSign and many others already integrated with Experian solutions, with more being added to the platform. Previously, integrating third-party solutions required tremendous time and effort, which often challenged in-house teams to execute in a timely, efficient manner. Through CrossCore, the responsibility of integrating additional tools and systems moves away from those teams to the platform itself, enabling clients to select best-in-class solutions from multiple providers without creating a strain on resources. Al Pascual, senior vice president, research director and head of fraud & security for Javelin, said, “There are so many great niche solutions to work with, and new ones come out almost every day. To really have a world-class approach, the client has to put all those little things together, because there never will be one vendor who does it all. The market challenge is about how to make it faster and easier to bring things together to enable a more dynamic and fluid approach to managing risk.” CrossCore features Common access through a flexible API connects disparate systems to improve risk controls while reducing integration cost and complexity An open approach enables clients to connect and optimize a portfolio of best-in-class solutions across Experian, third-party services and existing systems Powerful strategy design and workflow decisioning functions enable fraud and compliance teams to apply services in any combination to get the level of confidence required A modern Software as a Service (SaaS) architecture provides scalability and the ability to make strategy changes dynamically with no down time Experian, which offers fraud and identity services in more than 44 countries, developed CrossCore to address the widespread market need consistently expressed by its clients for a faster, easier way to get more out of their existing systems and add new tools to improve their customers’ experience while minimizing risk. Companies can begin accessing CrossCore immediately, with the ability to turn on Experian services through a single integration, connect their own fraud and identity capabilities with a common API and turn on new services as they are added. The initial release includes key Experian products: FraudNet for Account Opening; Hunter®, for application fraud detection; Prove-ID, for international identity verification; and Precise ID®, for U.S. identity verification, including knowledge-based authentication. (KBA). Third-party fraud and identity service providers can engage with CrossCore to connect their services. “Now, companies can implement a new approach to managing fraud and identity services — one that will give them greater control over their risk exposure and enable them to provide a safer and more enjoyable experience for their customers,” added Platt. Learn more about CrossCore at https://www.experian.com/crosscore [1]Gartner, Identity Proofing Revisited as Data Confidentiality Dies, Avivah Litan, Dec. 12, 2013; last reviewed on April 28, 2015  

According to a national survey by Experian, one in five college grads give their school an “F” in credit education. Additional survey highlights: 69% will have student loan debt after graduation 71% did not learn about credit and debt management in college 55% feel like they are “going it alone” when it comes to their finances 72% express concern about paying off their debt Credit is a skill — one that can be developed through the right education. The Experian Credit Education blog has useful information to help college grads learn the basics of credit and how they can improve their credit score. College Graduate Survey Report

Last week we had the pleasure of joining more than 400 clients at the 35th annual Vision Conference — connecting business leaders to ideas and solutions. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing some insights from our fraud and identity dedicated session track. I had the pleasure of presenting alongside the U.S. Secret Service, and we had a packed session to discuss the Dark Web — what it is, how it’s accessed, how criminals are exploiting it to commit fraud and the human impact of the massive global cybercrime problem. According to McAfee®, cybercrime represents a $500 billion cost to the global economy — and that’s projected to rise to $600 billion this year, outpacing any other form of crime. With the Internet economy generating between $2 trillion and $3 trillion annually, that means cybercrime is extracting roughly 15 to 20 percent of the entire value created by the Internet. This is a massive problem, and it’s not going away. Unfortunately, there are countless tools and services to commit fraud available on the Web, providing attackers with the cloak of anonymity they need to compromise accounts, mimic legitimate users and submit fraudulent transactions. Device intelligence helps unmask these activities. It is a critical component to defend against the threat, and it provides insight into every interaction throughout a typical customer journey (from account setup to login and account maintenance to transactions). Without this visibility into users’ historical behavior and typical population patterns, organizations often have limited options to target attackers and identify anomalous behaviors. This is key to a successful cybercrime detection and mitigation strategy. Another important point in the session regarded recent law enforcement and private industry successes in identifying, tracking, apprehending and prosecuting online attackers. We thankfully have made significant strides in this area, as evidenced by the work of the Secret Service and other law enforcement organizations, but the collaboration must continue — and intensify. As mentioned in a CNBC story published on the same day as our presentation, the Dark Web is an increasingly mainstream source for everything from financial crime to drug trade and human trafficking. Unfortunately, most businesses are in the dark about the growing criminal underground, but Experian can help. With proper fraud expertise and innovative tools to defend against these ever-evolving threats, organizations can uncloak the attackers and safeguard the business.

HELOC originations continued to benefit from the real-estate recovery and consumer desire to tap into available equity. According to the latest Experian–Oliver Wyman Market Intelligence Report, HELOC originations totaled $37.7 billion during Q1 2016 — an increase of 14% over Q1 2015. As HELOC originations continue their growth trend, lenders can stay ahead of the competition by using advanced analytics to target the right customers and increase profitability. Revamp Mortgage Acquisition Strategies

False declines are often unwarranted and occur due to lack of customer information Have you ever been shopping online, excited to get your hands on the latest tech gadget, only to be hit with the all-too-common disappointment of a credit card decline? Whom did you blame? The merchant? The issuer? The card associations? The answer is probably all of the above. False declines like the situation described above provoke an onslaught of consumer emotions ranging from shock and dismay to frustration and anger. Of course, consumers aren’t the only ones negatively impacted by false declines. Many times card issuers lose their coveted “top of wallet” position and/or retailers lose revenue when customers abandon the purchase altogether. False declines are unpleasant for everyone, yet consumers struggle with this problem every day — and fraud controls are only getting tighter. How does the industry mutually resolve this growing issue? The first step is to understand why it occurs. Most false declines happen when the merchant or issuer mistakenly declines a legitimate transaction due to perceived high risk. This misperception is usually the result of the merchant or issuer not having enough information to verify the authenticity of the cardholder confidently. For example, the consumer may be a first-time customer or the purchase may be a departure from the card holder’s normal pattern of transaction activity. Research shows that lack of a holistic view and no cross-industry transaction visibility result in approximately $40 billion of e-commerce declines annually. Think about this for a minute — $40 billion in preventable lost revenue due to lack of information. Merchants’ customer information is often limited to their first-hand information and experience with consumers. To solve this growing problem, Experian® developed TrustInsight™, a real-time engine to establish trusted online relationships over time among consumers, merchants and issuers. It works by anonymously leveraging transactional information that merchants and financial institutions already have about consumers to create a crowd-sourced TrustScore™. This score allows first-time online customers to get a VIP experience rather than a brand-damaging decline. Another common challenge for merchants is measuring the scope of the false declines problem. Proactively contacting consumers, directly capturing feedback and quickly verifying transaction details to recoup potential lost sales are best practices, but merchants are often in the dark as to how many good customers are being turned away. The solution — often involving substantial operational expense — is to hold higher-risk orders for manual review rather than outright declining them. With average industry review rates nearing 30 percent of all online orders (according to the latest CyberSource Annual Fraud Benchmark Report: A Balancing Act), this growing level of review is not sustainable. This is where industry collaboration via TrustInsight™ offers such compelling value. TrustInsight can reduce the review population significantly by leveraging consumers’ transactions across the network to establish trust between individuals and their devices to automate more approvals. Thankfully, the industry is taking note. There is a groundswell of focus on the issue of false declines and their impact on good customers. Traditional, operations-heavy approaches are no longer sufficient. A trust-based industry-consortium approach is essential to enhance visibility, recognize consumers and their devices holistically, and ensure that consumers are impacted only when a real threat is present.

Adam Fingersh, senior vice president and general manager of Experian’s fraud and identity business, shared several fraud prevention strategies that businesses and consumers can use to manage risk and increase security while using Internet-enabled products, also known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

James W. Paulsen, Chief Investment Strategist for Wells Capital Management, kicked off the second day of Experian’s Vision 2016, sharing his perspective on the state of the economy and what the future holds for consumers and businesses alike. Paulsen joked this has been “the most successful, disappointing recovery we’ve ever had.” While media and lenders project fear for a coming recession, Paulsen stated it is important to note we are in the 8th year of recovery in the U.S., the third longest in U.S. history, with all signs pointing to this recovery extending for years to come. Based on his indicators – leverage, restored household strength, housing, capital spending and better global growth – there is still capacity to grow. He places recession risk at 20 to 25 percent – and only quotes those numbers due the length of the recovery thus far. “What is the fascination with crisis policies when there is no crisis,” asks Paulsen. “I think we have a good chance of being in the longest recovery in U.S. history.” Other noteworthy topics of the day: Fraud prevention Fraud prevention continues to be a hot topic at this year’s conference. Whether it’s looking at current fraud challenges, such as call-center fraud, or looking to future-proof an organization’s fraud prevention techniques, the need for flexible and innovative strategies is clear. With fraudsters being quick, and regularly ahead of the technology fighting them, the need to easily implement new tools is fundamental for you to protect your businesses and customers. More on Regulatory The Military Lending Act has been enhanced over the past year to strengthen protections for military consumers, and lenders must be ready to meet updated regulations by fall 2016. With 1.46 million active personnel in the U.S., all lenders are working to update processes and documentation associated with how they serve this audience. Alternative Data What is it? How can it be used? And most importantly, can this data predict a consumer’s credit worthiness? Experian is an advocate for getting more entities to report different types of credit data including utility payments, mobile phone data, rental payments and cable payments. Additionally, alternative data can be sourced from prepaid data, liquid assets, full file public records, DDA data, bill payment, check cashing, education data, payroll data and subscription data. Collectively, lenders desire to assess someone’s stability, ability to pay and willingness to repay. If alternative data can answer those questions, it should be considered in order to score more of the U.S. population. Financial Health The Center for Financial Services Innovation revealed insights into the state of American’s financial health. According to a study they conducted, 57 percent of Americans are not financially healthy, which equates to about 138 million people. As they continue to place more metrics around defining financial health, the center has landed on four components: how people plan, spend, save and borrow. And if you think income is a primary factor, think again. One-third of Americans making more than $60k a year are not healthy, while one-third making less than $60k a year are healthy. --- Final Vision 2016 breakouts, as well as a keynote from entertainer Jay Leno, will be delivered on Wednesday.

According to a recent Experian survey, the majority of newlyweds say financial responsibility is a key quality in a spouse. Yet many neglect to discuss finances with their partner before marriage. Other factors unknown to newlyweds include: Their spouse’s credit score (40%) Their spouse’s annual income (25%) Their spouse’s long-term financial goals (31%) The amount of their spouse’s student loan debt (31%) As newlyweds face a blending of finances for a promising tomorrow, lenders can help by providing personalized credit education to start building strong relationships with these potentially loyal, creditworthy customers. Survey Results: Newlyweds and Credit

This article first appeared in Baseline Magazine Since it is possible for cyber-criminals to create a synthetic person, businesses must be able to differentiate between synthetic and true-party identities. Children often make up imaginary friends and have a way of making them come to life. They may come over to play, go on vacation with you and have sleepover parties. As a parent, you know they don’t really exist, but you play along anyway. Think of synthetic identities like imaginary friends. Unfortunately, some criminals create imaginary identities for nefarious reasons, so the innocence associated with imaginary friends is quickly lost. Fraudsters combine and manipulate real consumer data with fictitious demographic information to create a “new” or “synthetic” individual. Once the synthetic person is “born,” fraudsters create a financial life and social history that mirrors true-party behaviors. The similarities in financial activities make it difficult to detect good from bad and real from synthetic. There really is no difference in the world of automated transaction processing between you and a synthetic identity. Often the synthetic “person” is viewed as a thin or shallow file consumer— perhaps a millennial. I have a hard time remembering all of my own passwords, so how do organized “synthetic schemes” keep all the information usable and together across hundreds of accounts? Our data scientists have found that information is often shared from identity to identity and account to account. For instance, perhaps synthetic criminals are using the same or similar passwords or email addresses across products and accounts in your portfolio. Or, perhaps physical address and phone records have cross-functional similarities. The algorithms and sciences are much more complex, but this simplifies how we are able to link data, analytics, strategies and scores. Identifying the Business Impact of Synthetic-Identity Fraud Most industry professionals look at synthetic-identity fraud as a relatively new fraud threat. The real risk runs much deeper in an organization than just operational expense and fraud loss dollars. Does your fraud strategy include looking at all types of risk, compliance reporting, and how processes affect the customer experience? To identify the overall impact synthetic identities can have on your institution, you should start asking: Are you truly complying with "Know Your Customer" (KYC) regulations when a synthetic account exists in your active portfolio? Does your written "Customer Identification Program" (CIP) include or exclude synthetic identities? Should you be reporting this suspicious activity to the compliance officer (or department) and submitting a suspicious activity report (SAR)? Should you charge off synthetic accounts as credit or fraud losses? Which department should be the owner of suspected synthetic accounts: Credit Risk, Collections or Fraud? Do you have run any anti-money laundering (AML) risk when participating in money movements and transfers? Depending on your answers to the above questions, you may be incurring potential risks in the policies and procedures of synthetic identity treatment, operational readiness and training practices. Since it is possible to create a synthetic person, businesses must be able to differentiate between synthetic and true-party identities, just as parents need to differentiate between their child's real and imaginary friends.

Experian’s 2016 Digital Marketer Report reveals the key issues impacting marketers today. 38% of marketers rank knowing customer needs, wants and attitudes as their top challenge. Other key challenges include: Increasing visibility over competitors (35%) Staying ahead of new marketing trends (33%) Integrating multiple marketing technologies and platforms (32%) Making messages relevant/contextual (27%) Companies can increase engagement by leveraging data and technology to understand customers and provide exceptional experiences through every channel, every time. >> Download The 2016 Digital Marketer Report

As new vehicle prices continue to rise, more consumers are turning to leasing as a cost-effective auto financing option. Findings from the most recent State of the Automotive Finance Market report show that the average lease payment for Q4 2015 was $412 (versus the average loan payment of $493). Not surprisingly, due to the fact that most consumers tend to finance vehicles based on monthly prices, leasing reached a record high, accounting for 33.6% of all new financing during the quarter. Lenders can design more effective strategies by using analytics to gain insight into the latest trends and to target the right customers for automotive leases and loans. >> Video: Auto Acquisition Strategies

A recent Experian study reveals that tax filing, document collection and refund processing are done online more often, yet only 6% of consumers file taxes on a computer with up-to-date antivirus software. 79% filed their most recent tax return online, up from 73% in 2011 18% scan and save their tax documents electronically, up from 6% in 2011 More than 75% of respondents have used EFT for tax refunds As electronic filing continues to grow, identity theft is likely to increase. While consumers should take steps to protect themselves, businesses also need to employ identity theft protection solutions to safeguard consumer information. >> Identify and prevent fraud

Device emulators — wolves in sheep’s clothing Despite all the fraud prevention systems and resources in the public and private sectors, online fraud continues to grow at an alarming rate, offering a low-risk, high-reward proposition for fraudsters. Unfortunately, the Web houses a number of easily accessible tools that criminals can use to perpetrate fraud and avoid detection. The device emulator is one of these tools. Simply put, a device emulator is one device that pretends to be another. What began as innovative technology to enable easy site testing for Web developers quickly evolved into a universally available tool that attackers can exploit to wreak havoc across all industry verticals. While it’s not new technology, there has been a significant increase in its use by criminals to deceive simple device identification and automated risk-management solutions to carry out fraudulent activities. Suspected device emulation (or spoofing) traffic historically has been difficult to identify because fraud solutions rely heavily on reputation databases or negative lists. Detecting and defeating these criminals in sheep’s clothing is possible, however. Leveraging Experian’s collective fraud intelligence and data modeling expertise, our fraud research team has isolated several device attributes that can identify the presence of an emulator being used to submit multiple transactions. Thanks to these latest FraudNet rule sets, financial institutions, ecommerce merchants, airlines, insurers and government entities alike now can uncloak and protect against many of these cybercriminals. Unfortunately, device emulators are just one of many tools available to criminals on the Dark Web. Join me at Vision 2016, where U.S. Secret Service and I will share more tales from the Dark Web. We will explore the scale of the global cybercrime problem, walk through the anatomy of a typical hack, explain how hackers exploit browser plug-ins, and describe how enhanced device intelligence and visibility across all channels can stop fraudsters in their tracks. Listen to Mike Gross as he shares a short overview of his Vision 2016 breakout session in this short video. Don’t miss this innovative Vision 2016 session! See you there.