Experian, the global information services company, has today announced the launch of a suite of new capabilities for Ascend, its cloud-based state-of-the-art analytics and technology platform. These latest innovations aim to increase operational efficiency, maximise profitability, and support lenders and businesses in today’s rapidly changing market conditions and evolving consumer behaviours.

Paul Speirs, Managing Director, Consumer Information Services, Experian UK&I, said: “These new enhancements to our Ascend platform are a game changer in productivity and data access.”

“Customers will be able to quickly create and manage models without significant investment in their infrastructure. This is in light of recent Experian global research showing that it takes 15 months on average to build and deploy a model for credit decisioning. Not only that, they will also get improved access to timely and accurate data, which is one of the most common constraints in any analytics project.”

Key new feature updates to the Ascend platform include:

  • Ascend Retro On Demand: Available now, this will be the fastest self-service retrospective data service in the market. It can now take less than four hours, from specification to data access, for customers to access up to 100,000 record retro files. This moves retrospective analysis from a periodic action to an anytime iterative approach, allowing analytical testing and value proving to be conducted at a much faster pace.
  • Ascend Ops: While Retro on Demand provides proof of value, Ascend Ops simplifies model deployment, allowing customers to swiftly host and deploy models. By utilising machine learning, the solution offers the ability to build, test and manage new features and models for credit decisioning within days instead of months. It will reduce costs and streamline operations by allowing the rapid deployment of scorecards using Experian’s data via customer’s existing APIs, eliminating the need to recode and provides model governance support. This will be available from March 2024.
  • Eligibility analytics: Key updates in soft search and performance data have been made to the best-in-class data and analytics environment within Ascend, including unique data from price comparison websites. This update offers valuable insights by enabling lenders to compare their performance with market trends, as well as optimise lending terms to improve conversion.

Speirs added: “Here at Experian, our goal is to connect the dots when it comes to data, technology, and insights, and the Ascend platform showcases that powerful combination. It is uniquely built on the most complete credit behaviour database, offers actionable insights, and focuses on areas our customers have identified as highly inefficient in their day-to-day work. Whether a company wants to launch innovative products into markets, or diversify into new segments, understand competitive position, and market trends – or build, tune, or deploy models; Ascend can support it all.”

The Experian Ascend cloud-based platform is a modern technology foundation that integrates client data, industry-specific data feeds and Experian’s unique capabilities in data, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to provide customers with the opportunity to assess risk and monitor and create change. It not only eliminates traditional barriers like data limitations, lengthy preparation, skill scarcity, and IT dependencies, but the vast ecosystem of end-to-end products provides flexibility and scalability and all within a secure environment.

These new capabilities can be used independently or with other integrated solutions available on the Experian Ascend platform, including PowerCurve® to optimise decisions for key business outcomes.

To learn more, please visit experian.co.uk/business/platforms/ascend.

About Experian

Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. During life’s big moments – from buying a home or a car, to sending a child to college, to growing a business by connecting with new customers – we empower consumers and our clients to manage their data with confidence. We help individuals to take financial control and access financial services, businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lenders to lend more responsibly, and organisations to prevent identity fraud and crime.

We have 22,400 people operating across 32 countries and every day we’re investing in new technologies, talented people, and innovation to help all our clients maximise every opportunity. With corporate headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, we are listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and are a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

Learn more at www.experianplc.com or visit our global content hub at our global news blog for the latest news and insights from the Group.