Traditionally, this time of year is a time of renewal, in many senses of the word. The economy is rebounding with a vengeance; business everywhere in Asia is gearing up. What better time than to welcome you to the first issue of Experian® e-Vision Asia Pacific, your one-stop information source on Experian.

In this issue, look for the most recent corporate news that convey the exciting developments that are taking place within Experian's global organization over the past three months. It also contains news on the latest product news that will help you explore ways to adopt Experian's industry-leading business solutions to gain a competitive edge.

For opportunities to share best practices, we have also included a section on customer success stories detailing the challenges that our customers encountered, and how they are solving them.

Lastly, we have included a section on upcoming events with details of Experian-organized seminars, workshops and other related activities.

e-Vision Asia Pacific aims to be a useful, practical source of information organized in a thoughtful way that doesn't let the layout get in your way. If you have any opinions about the content, please do not hesitate to give us your feedback by sending comments to info@au.experian.com. Your suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thank you, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Hot News
Experian Increases Global Compliance Portfolio with Acquisition of Americas Software
Combined strengths of ASC and Experian create a full range of products for fraud and money laundering detection.
Full Story >>

Experian Mitigates Effects of Rising Delinquencies with Collect SM Strategic Collections and Debt Recovery Solution
Discover how Collect SM enables a more strategic and analytical approach debt recovery.
Full Story >>

Solution News
Experian-Scorex Unveils Streamlined, Efficient and Flexible Application Processing
Application processing solutions that meet operational requirements while offering sophisticated decisioning.
Full Story >>

Experian's New Hunter System takes the Fight Against Global Fraud
Learn how enhanced fraud prevention system Hunter II fights fraud on a global scale.
Full Story >>

Client News
Barclays Selects Marketing Optimisation from Experian
Barclays PLC, one of the world's largest banks, became the first organisation in the UK to use new version of Experian's Marketswitch optimisation software.
Full Story >>

  
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Introduction to the Decisioning Process for Credit Risk (1/2 day)

14 June - Beijing, China
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Event Schedule 2005
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Experian Increases Global Compliance Portfolio with the Acquisition of Americas Software

Experian last year acquired Americas Software Corporation (ASC), a leading developer and marketer of regulatory compliance software systems providing anti-money laundering solutions to banks and other businesses worldwide.

Combining strengths with ASC enables Experian to offer a full range of global compliance products for identity verification, fraud and money laundering detection and government regulations compliance.

Experian's strength in customer identification programs bolsters ASC's monitoring, screening and compliance technology to automate detection, investigation and reporting of financial activities. Clients will benefit from reduced administrative burdens and costs associated with manual compliance.

Powered by the industry's largest proprietary database, Experian's suite of compliance solutions offers superior choice for customer's anti-money laundering and fraud prevention needs.

Americas Software Corporation clients, on the other hand, benefit from Experian's diverse fraud prevention solutions, outstanding client support services, and worldwide presence.

Experian's anti-money laundering solutions are proven to help financial institutions in over 35 countries comply with federal and international anti-money laundering regulations and as well as enhance their profitability.

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Experian Mitigates Effects of Rising Delinquencies with Collect SM Strategic Collections and Debt Recovery Solution

Experian's specialist decision solutions business, Experian-Scorex, has launched Collect SM, a new collections and debt recovery solutions designed to help financial services organisations adopt a more strategic and analytical approach to their early collection and debt recovery process.

Part of Experian -Scorex Strategy Management solutions used by more than 600 clients from over 60 countries, Collect SM provides a flexible and automated infrastructure supporting complete collection process, from pre-delinquency to late collections and write-off. The organisation is able to process its collection cases on a day-to-day basis, supported by sophisticated decisioning that ensures that the actions taken are the most appropriate depending on the customer's circumstances.

"The effectiveness of the collection function within a financial organization can make a significant impact to its overall profitability," said Liam Hand, Director of Credit Operations, Bank of Ireland. "It's important to be able to understand the reasons why a customer is in trouble and then react accordingly. If you are able to make the collections functions strategically effective, operationally efficient and customer-orientated, you will add significant value, both in terms of profits and customer services".

Steven Denby, UK Managing Director, Experian-Scorex, added: "A variety of pressures, such as market forces, legislation and competition, are forcing change within the collection function, and the processes to collect debts are becoming increasingly sophisticated whilst adapting to the change. Collect SM uses tried and tested decision and workflow technologies to greater effect and will enable organisations to meet these new challenges.

"Organisation needs to deploy advanced methods to ensure their collection departments maximize their performance. By understanding the objectives for the different stages of collections and adopting a strategic approach, an organisation can expect to reduce both losses and costs whilst improving overall customer services," Denby said.

As part of the global Experian organisation, Experian-Scorex has more than 30 years experience managing bureau data, adding intelligence to that data and delivering scoring solutions. Experian-Scorex maintains connectivity with over 70 credit bureaux worldwide and, with 30 offices around the world; it is uniquely qualified to support local, national, regional and global businesses.

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Experian's new Hunter II system takes the fight against global fraud

Experian has launched Hunter II, a new fraud prevention system created to fight fraud on an international scale. Developed by MCL Software, Experian's specialist fraud prevention business, Hunter II will enable users to share data on fraudsters across different product types and industry sectors. As a result, the incidence and well as the financial and personal impacts of fraud on its victims will be greatly reduced.

David Usmar, Senior Fraud Manager from Hunter customer, Barclaycard, said: "We have used Hunter for a number of years and we welcome the new developments with Hunter II, including incorporation of the death register and automatic identification where a fraudster is impersonating a deceased person. This is a major step forward. It does not only prevent fraud, it also prevents a lot of heartache for innocent parties.

"By incorporating dynamic workflow that allows users to choose what to refer and to whom (including National and Corporate Hunter Matches), Hunter II should enable the allocation of prioritised work automatically, thereby increasing fraud prevention capability by quicker and easier identification of fraud.

"The Hunter development team has worked closely with Barclaycard and other Hunter users, seeking our ideas and opinions on how develop a product that meets our needs. We are now looking forward to trialling Hunter II and measuring the benefits of the new system."

"Fraud can wreak havoc on its victims," said Gary Wood, Managing Director of Experian's Fraud Solutions Business. "Lenders are not the only ones victimized. It is the genuine customer who invariably ends up paying more for credit and other goods and services as a result of fraud. In cases of identity theft, it is particularly upsetting for its victims. Often, this type of fraud can go undetected by its victims for up to four years. When it is detected, it can take another two years to sort out the damage caused from fraudulent activity – during which time it could make it difficult for victims to get a mortgage, a credit card or a bank loan.

"The most cost-effective way of reducing fraud and its impact is to not let it happen in the first place. Hunter II provides an effective deterrent to fraud and, with the use of the latest innovative technology, extends Hunter's fraud-fighting and data sharing abilities right across the world.

Hunter II uses internationally proven software techniques to data match credit applications and highlight inconsistencies – which may indicate suspicious fraudulent activity.

Highly intuitive, Hunter II offers full global language support to ensure that any language can be supported. Because the system is online, genuine applications can be identified and new business can be rapidly accepted, whilst fraudulent applications can be quickly identified and losses prevented from occurring. Hunter is already established in the UK, Australia and South Africa and, with the new developments, Hunter II will be rolled out across the world.

Gary Wood concluded: "Fraudsters don't abide by geographic boundaries, nor stick to one form of fraud or business, product or service to attack. Fraud is often a key part of organised criminal activity and it is only through international cooperation and the use of systems such as Hunter II, that businesses can keep ahead of the game. It is important that businesses make a stand and employ the latest fraud prevention tools to dramatically reduce fraud and its impact on its victims."

Hunter II works by automatically checking new applications and claims against previous applications or claims, suspect information and extensive fraud databases. This ensures that previously fraudulent, suspect, declined or multiple applications can be identified, along with any adverse or previous address information which an applicant may be deliberately hiding. The use of an alias or false names, false employment details and impersonation can also be matched and highlighted through the Hunter II system.

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Experian-Scorex Unveils Streamlined, Efficient and Flexible Application Processing

An application processing system needs to be both efficient and flexible. It needs to be highly effective but streamlined to enable a quick turnaround of processing and decisioning while capturing all the information customers need to manage their portfolio.

The solution needs to receive, validate and manage the flow of data and applications. The users need to have all the relevant information at their fingertips. It needs to be robust, especially in today's world of 24-hour business. It needs to be fully scalable, whether a user is starting up or processing thousands of applications a day. It also needs to be scalable, whether a customer has a single product or a complex business across multiple channels, products, regions and platforms. Most of all, it needs to offer a rapid, consistent processing solution fully integrating with existing systems.

Experian-Scorex offers application processing solutions that meet operational requirements while offering sophisticated decisioning controlled by the business user, in the business user's environment. The combination of a customised solution with automated data management and decisioning offers a powerful solution to the customer.

Experian-Scorex can offer a fully personalised delivery, featuring a multi-platform and web-enabled and easily interfaces with external data sources. Experian-Scorex application processing system offers the following benefits:

  • Rapid, robust and scalable solution to meet your growth in portfolio and business operation
  • Maximise the power of information for effective and accurate decisioning with links to over 60 credit bureaux world-wide
  • Deploy one system across all channels with flexible technology including secure internet processing
  • Maintain your competitive edge with rapid reaction to change using the fully customisable solution and flexible control
  • Reduce costs and refocus resource on strategic challenges with an automated and streamlined operation

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Barclays Selects Marketing Optimisation from Experian

Barclays PLC, one of the world's largest banks, boosts its customer communications using marketing optimization solution from Experian.

The solution helps Barclays improve communications to its eight million customers by automatically determining the most appropriate offer to make to each customer, the best time to make the offer and the optimal channel through which to send the offer.

Supported by Experian-Scorex, Experian's decision support business, Barclays combines information about actual and potential customer events, such as insurance renewal date and credit products reaching the end of term, with channel and product propensity scores. Using mathematically based decisioning, Barclays is able to make truly optimal decisions to proactively plan its marketing campaigns over time, taking into account day-to-day resource and business targets.

"We looked at a number of optimisation vendors in the market and we chose Experian's solution because it delivered the ability to optimise individual customers over time, which is key to our business requirements," said Matt Harris, Head of CRM for Barclays Customer Insight."

Experian's Marketswitch software also enables us to easily and dynamically alter the optimised actions for each customer as our budget, resources and product plans change. It will revolutionise the way we plan our customer contact plans, reducing the time required from days to hours".

Jo Buxton, Director of Business Development for Experian-Scorex, added: "We worked very closely with the Barclays CRM team to understand its requirements and built a prototype system, in just 10 days, which demonstrated the flexibility of the solution and the return on investment required for the business case.

"Marketing optimisation represents a technological breakthrough in managing a financial services retail portfolio. It enables organisations to significantly improve their business profitability and provides greater control over specific customer management strategies and how they impact profits. As a result, Barclays will be able to recommend the best action or decision for each individual customer: the 'segment of one'."

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