Experian plc, formerly known as CCN Systems, is a global information services group with operations in 41 countries. The company employs 15,500 people with corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and operational headquarters in Nottingham, England, Costa Mesa, California, US and São Paulo, Brazil. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

History[link]

The Company was founded by John Peace in 1980 in Nottingham as CCN systems, an information services business owned by GUS plc.^[3]

In 1996 GUS plc acquired the US credit reporting business Experian, formerly known as TRW Information Services, from Bain Capital and the Thomas H. Lee Partners.^[4] GUS combined Experian with CCN. GUS retained the Experian name for its combined credit services subsidiary.^[5]

In 2004 Experian acquired CheetahMail, a business founded in 1998 that provided e-mail marketing software and services.^[6] In the same year Experian also acquired QAS, a supplier of contact data management and identity verification solutions.^[7]

In 2005 Experian became the first company to win the UK Business of the Year award twice, having also won in 2003.^[8]

In August 2005 Experian accepted a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over charges that Experian had violated a previous settlement with the FTC. The FTC's allegations concerned customers who signed up for the "free credit report" at Experian's Consumerinfo.com site. The FTC alleged that ads for the "free credit report" did not adequately disclose that Experian would automatically enroll customers in Experian's $79.95 credit-monitoring program.^[9][10]

In 2005 Experian acquired PriceGrabber for $485 million.^[11] Also in 2005, Experian acquired FootFall, an information provider to the retail and retail property industries:^[12] FootFall is now a part of Experian's marketing solutions division. Still in 2005, Experian acquired LowerMyBills.com for $330 million USD.^[13]

In September 2006 Experian announced its purchase of Northern Credit Bureaus, located in Quebec, Canada.^[14]

In October 2006 Experian was demerged from the British company GUS plc and listed on the London Stock Exchange.^[15]

In June 2007, Experian acquired an initial 65% stake in Serasa, the market leading credit bureau in Brazil and now the largest credit bureau in the world. The purchase price for the initial stake was $1.2bn. This was the first acquisition for Experian in Latin America.^[16]

In mid-2007 Experian acquired a number of software companies with products that filled gaps in their existing portfolio. The intention was to be able to offer Experian's customers an Experian-branded product for all phases of the customer lifecycle. These included:

• Emailing Solution, a French e-mail marketing company. The intention was to grow the existing CheetahMail business with the acquisition of this new client portfolio.^[17]

• Hitwise, an internet monitor that collects data directly from information service provider networks.^[18]

• Tallyman^[19] debt collection management software from Bristol-based Talgentra.^[20]

In January 2008 Experian announced that it would cut over 200 jobs at its Nottingham office as it moved development work to India to reduce costs.^[21]

Experian shut down its Canadian operations on 14 April 2009.^[22]

Experian purchases RentBureau in June 2010, which houses rental payment histories on over 7 million US residents, this data will now be included in Experian US consumer credit reports as of January 2011.^[23]

In August 2010, Experian became the first CICRA licensed credit bureau to go live in India. Since then the company has provided Experian credit reports to lenders and consumers in compliance with the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) guidelines.^[24]

Experian purchases a majority stake in Techlightenment on 17 January 2011, as part of Experian's strategy to grow its digital marketing capabilities. Techlightenment is a data driven technology and marketing company based in the UK, which helps clients to leverage advertising through key social media platforms. Techlightenment will form part of the UK Experian Marketing Services Division.^[25]

In May 2011 Experian acquired a 98% holding in Computec S.A., a credit services information provider based in Colombia, for the equivalent of US$380m.^[26]

In June 2011, Experian acquired Medical Present Value, Inc. (MPV), a provider of data, analytics and software in the US healthcare payments market. Its products are used by healthcare providers to manage payments between patients, commercial payers (such as insurance companies) and government programmes.^[27]

In July 2011, Experian acquired Virid Interatividade Digital Ltda (“Virid”), an email marketing company offering email delivery, email based behavioural segmentation, real-time campaign reporting, mobile delivery and social media integration in Brazil.^[28]

Operations[link]

Experian's principal lines of business are credit services, marketing solutions, decision analytics and interactive services. The company collects information on people, businesses, motor vehicles and insurance. It also collects 'lifestyle' data from on- and off-line surveys.

Experian provides services in North America, Latin America, UK and Ireland, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific and reports its financial performance across those regions. Activities in these regions are grouped into four principal activities: Credit Services, Decision Analytics, Marketing Services and Interactive.

Like the other major credit reporting bureaus, Experian is chiefly regulated in the United States by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, signed into law in 2003, amended the FCRA to require the credit reporting companies to provide consumers with one free copy of their credit report per 12 month period. Like its main competitors, TransUnion and Equifax, Experian markets credit reports directly to consumers. Experian heavily markets its for-profit credit reporting service, FreeCreditReport.com, and all three agencies have been criticized and even sued for selling credit reports that can be obtained at no cost.^[29][30]

Experian US handles its credit disputes in its National Consumer Assistance Center (NCAC) in Allen, Texas. You may contact the NCAC once you have a copy of your personal credit report by calling the number that is located on the personal credit report itself. Experian opened a second NCAC in Santiago, Chile during the summer of 2007. Many divisions of the Allen NCAC as well as several other business functions including software development have been relocated to the Chile location.

Experian provides regional data at nationalscoreindex.com which shows average credit scores by region and zip code as well as various other measures of household debt. The site does not indicate if it uses a FICO based credit score, the new VantageScore, or some other scoring model.

The company's largest operation is Experian North America, a consumer credit reporting agency that is considered one of the three largest American credit agencies along with Equifax and TransUnion. (There is also a 4th credit agency known as Innovis.)

Senior management[link]

See also[link]

Companies portal

• Callcredit
• Compuscan
• Credit bureau
• Credit rating agency
• Freecreditreport.com
• Identity theft
• Intelliscore

References[link]

External links[link]

• Experiangroup.com, Homepage

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