The bank chose to rely on Experian's expertise to strengthen its account processing for cards, loans, and mortgages and enhance its customer services.

Strategy Management provides the business user with the ability to deploy timely and consistent decisions across the enterprise for every individual at every stage of the customer relationship. The scalable and robust software receives, validates and processes applications from multiple channels, accessing relevant data sources before applying complex business rules and strategies to make appropriate lending decisions. Once an applicant has been accepted, Strategy Management enables proactive and reactive customer management for risk, promotional activities for growth through to debt management activities, such as collections and recovery.

John Oldham, Head of Credit Analytics and Decision Systems, UK, HSBC, said: "Strategy Management will be used to determine the most appropriate approach for our customers who find themselves in arrears. It enables us to achieve consistency in decision-making across our diverse operations, whilst improving the speed and quality of our decisions."

Gary Wood, Managing Director of Experian's Decision Analytics UK division, commented: "The introduction of Strategy Management at the bank will contribute to improving risk management and lower operational costs. We are proud for being HSBC's trusted partner both globally and locally".

The implementation of Strategy Management in HSBC is part of the global agreement signed in 2006 to support the bank's lending decisions around the world. HSBC will implement the Strategy Management business rules engine into its new business processing environment in over 40 countries. Experian and HSBC have a longstanding relationship spanning 21 years and six continents.