It’s now be possible to take a multi-dimensional view of a borrower’s financial health with Experian Credit 3D.

Knowing a consumer’s credit information at a single point in time only offers a snapshot of their financial behaviour. However, by using innovative trended and alternative data sources via Experian Credit 3D, businesses can access an unparalleled set of insights, enabling faster decisions based on a more rounded picture of affordability.

Using Experian’s extended trended and alternative data capabilities provides a more granular and predictive insight into a consumer’s payment behaviour. Drawing on the largest and deepest data source in the market, Experian Credit 3D will also offer an ‘on-the-spot’ summary of key data points for faster customer decisions.

They can also access a new set of value added data blocks to overlay Experian’s risk scores, containing summarised views of more than 50 key data attributes, evaluating payment behaviour over a period of up to six years. They’ll also be able to combine rental, utilities, council tax, property and mobile data, to provide a view of predictive behaviour and affordability - all derived using advanced analytics.

These new sources of insight will also be made available in Experian Ascend Analytics on Demand.

Tom Blacksell, Managing Director of B2B at Experian, said:

“A customer’s current credit position only ever tells part of the story. People’s financial circumstances are multidimensional and unique. By providing a range of smart insights that recognise this, we are supporting our customers as they look to keep up with a diverse and ever-changing global population.

“With Experian Credit 3D, we are making richer sources of data available to our customers to make this possible, combining trended and new alternative data sources, such as open data. But, more importantly, we are employing our vast set of capabilities and wealth of experience in advanced analytics and machine learning to help our customers through this period of exciting and rapid change.”

There’s little doubt that the market is evolving fast, driven by burgeoning consumer demand for a more fluid and accurate customer experience. According to a recent survey[1], 77% of businesses cited ‘gaining better insights about their customers’ as a top priority for the year ahead.

Traditional risk scores have evolved significantly over the last five years using analytics and utilising different data sources, such as rental, mobile and payday loan data. They use a view of payment history and credit use at the point of application to form a risk score, which remains a reliable and successful assessment method for many ‘mainstream’ consumer applications with stable profiles.

Augmenting traditional risk scores with a view of detailed consumer behaviours over time is particularly valuable in making decisions on applications which are currently on the margins. Alternative non-credit data, including subscriptions and utilities data, can support the approval of applications from consumers with ‘thin’ credit files.

“Our unique combination of data, technology and analytics will help businesses unlock insights and take decisive actions in the moments that matter,” added Blacksell.

“This will enable organisations to explore, build, test and deploy new strategies seamlessly, with access to whole of market data, big data science toolkits and powerful visualisations

“By combining all this with our global market leading decisioning capabilities in PowerCurve, and our soon to be announced investments in SaaS deployment, we’ll be able to support customers of all sizes to make intelligent decisions in frictionless, digital environments.”