The consumer credit reporting agencies in the U.S. — especially the big three of Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion — help consumers and society in general by aligning costs with risk. Analytics is now helping by reducing uncertainties in the alignment.
The credit data housed in the reporting agencies traditionally focuses on people’s personal credit and payment history, down to details about how promptly they’ve repaid loans and when they were late on a payment. Companies that grant credit, ranging from mortgages to car loans to credit card limits, use the agency’s information to decide what products to offer and on what terms. People with “clean” histories may get better terms; people with smudged financial backgrounds may not. But other dirt — inaccuracies and incomplete information — leads to uncertainty and costs everyone.
Greg Jones is one of the data specialists tasked with making the data as clean as possible. As vice president of Enterprise Data & Analytics at Equifax — a global provider founded in 1899 that generates 158 billion credit-score updates per month and operates or has investments in 19 countries — Jones says he’s “accountable for our enterprise Search Match and Entity Resolution systems.”