Welcome to the Experian Thought Leadership Hub

This week's Commercial Pulse Report highlights key economic trends and small business credit conditions, providing insights for lenders, risk professionals, and business leaders.

The U.S. economy continues to face high interest rates and shifting market conditions:

• Inflation rose to 2.9% in December, marking its third consecutive increase and the highest level since July 2024.
• Unemployment declined to 4.0% in January, the lowest level since April 2024, but job growth slowed, with only 143K jobs added.
• Q4 GDP grew at 2.3%, down from 3.1% in Q3, indicating a moderate but slowing expansion.
• The Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady, reinforcing concerns about persistent inflation.

This report features the latest findings from the Experian Small Business Index™, a data-driven tool tracking small business financial health.

Check out the full report to see how these trends could impact your strategy!

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As a background screener, your ability to prevent fraud depends not only on your internal processes but also on the quality of your data and solutions partner. Are you confident you’re working with the right partner to detect and mitigate fraud effectively?

Our Fraud Prevention Checklist is designed to guide background screening professionals in selecting a data partner that enhances their screening process. Inside, you’ll find critical questions and considerations, including: 

Key steps for early identity verification to flag fraudulent applicants 

• The importance of leveraging trusted and robust data sources for cross-verification 
• Advanced tools like synthetic identity detection, biometric verification and behavioral analytics 
• Ensuring your partner is aligned with the latest fraud prevention trends  

Download the checklist now to ensure your screening process is supported by the right partner and stays fraud resistant. 

Generative AI is transforming fraud at an unprecedented pace — making attacks faster, more sophisticated, and harder to detect.
In this webinar, our fraud experts discuss key trends for 2025 and share actionable strategies to strengthen your defenses.

What you'll learn:

• The top three fraud threats to watch in 2025.
• How fraud leaders are tackling GenAI-driven attacks.
• Practical strategies for building a future-ready fraud stack.

Watch now to stay ahead of the evolving fraud landscape.

A top bank struggled to efficiently stop evolving fraud attacks. Fraudsters incurred unnecessary expenses as they worked downstream in the bank’s onboarding flow, with some even beating the bank’s defense’s entirely. After implementing behavioral analytics, the bank was able to detect attacks 4x faster and stop sophisticated attacks that their other tools couldn’t.

Key Results:

• 4x faster fraud detection resulting in a 30% reduction in digital onboarding costs
• Effective detection of modern attack strategies that bypassed other fraud mitigation tools
• 40% of manually approved fraud cases identified as risky by NeuroID

Overwhelmed by evolving fraud attacks and a heavy reliance on manual reviews, a leading credit union turned to NeuroID’s behavioral analytics to spot advanced fraudsters and stop attacks in real time.

Key Results:

• Improved top-of-funnel fraud detection, reducing fraud losses, false positives, and unnecessary step-ups
• Decreased manual review workload, freeing up over 40 hours a month for customer service and growth initiatives
• Real-time detection of attacks, providing improved protection and confidence in fraud mitigation capabilities

In an era of economic uncertainty, resilience can seem out of reach, but Gen Z is flipping the script. Watch this webinar to explore:

• Key credit trends and behaviors shaping Gen Z
• Their perspectives on personal finance and aspirations for the future
• How organizations can better support and engage this dynamic cohort

As we enter 2025, the mortgage industry continues to transform amid political and economic changes. Mortgage lenders must stay updated on trends to serve their customers effectively. Experian data scientists and analysts provide insights into the U.S. housing market's impact on lenders, highlighting recent trends and their implications. We aim to offer a comprehensive overview of the mortgage market, emphasizing key trends, regional differences, and potential growth areas.

• Market Trends: Understand the latest trends in mortgage originations, delinquencies, and interest rate fluctuations.
• Regional Insights: Explore regional variations in housing market activity and home equity levels.
• Strategic Recommendations: Get actionable insights to navigate the dynamic mortgage market in 2025.

Experian's 2025 Future of Fraud Forecast reveals five emerging fraud threats that could challenge businesses and consumers in 2025.

Key insights:

• This year’s predictions show that fraudsters will continue to double down on the digital landscape and leverage Generative AI (Gen AI) to commit sophisticated crimes at a rapid pace.
  
• Half of consumers surveyed said they are concerned about conducting activities online.
  
• 75% of companies cite cybercrime as a top concern.

Credit card limit management is crucial to the success and profitability of your portfolio. To improve customer satisfaction, retention and engagement, you'll want to gain deep insights to identify which of your customers qualify for higher limits and by how much. This can help you organization increase revenue and limit additional credit risk exposure.

Learn more about how credit card limit optimization can help you:

• Manage default risk 
• Improve consumer loyalty 
• Ensure regulatory compliance 

By implementing a proactive credit card limit management strategy, you can meet your customers’ credit needs while confidently mitigating risk.