Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox Now Available to More Lenders Seeking Deeper Insights, Greater Accuracy and Improved Decision-Making

Financial Institutions of All Sizes Can Leverage Advanced Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning with New Configurations of Experian’s Award-Winning Platform

In a move that will help fintechs, credit unions and banks of all sizes stay ahead of rapidly changing consumer behaviors by leveraging rich data sets and advanced analytics, Experian announced new configurations of its Ascend Analytical Sandbox. With access to Experian’s one-stop source for better decisioning, users from small to large size financial institutions can use the solution for model development, benchmarking, forecasting and much more.

“Our innovations like the Ascend Analytical Sandbox and Experian Boost help transform the way businesses operate and consumer’s thrive in today’s society,” said Alex Lintner, group president, Experian Consumer Information Services. “We understand the unique challenges smaller financial institutions face, including limited data sets, analytics tools and resources. With the new customizable configurations of our Ascend Analytical Sandbox, financial institutions of all sizes can access world-class advanced analytics, AI and machine learning tools to make faster, more informed decisions.”

Like the name suggests, Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox contains all the analytics tools financial institutions need to gain insight from data including R, Python, H2O, Tableau, SAS as well access to SAS Viya via an exclusive agreement with Experian. Through the platform, data scientists and business intelligence teams can leverage up to 18 years’ worth of depersonalized credit and alternative data and analytics tools to answer questions, such as “what happened,” “why did it happen” and “what should I do next?”

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The secure hybrid-cloud environment allows users to combine their own data sets with Experian’s exclusive data assets, including credit, alternative, commercial, auto and more. From there, users can build and test models across different stages of the lending cycle, including originations, prescreen, account management and collections, and seamlessly put their models into production. Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox also allows users to benchmark their portfolios against the industry, identify credit trends and explore new product opportunities.

All the insights gathered through the Ascend Analytical Sandbox can be viewed and shared through interactive dashboards and customizable reports that can be pulled in near real time. Additional use cases include:

• Reject inferencing – refine models, scorecards and strategies by analyzing trades opened by previous applicants who were rejected or approved but did not move forward
• Prescreen campaigns – design prescreen campaigns, evaluate results and improve strategies
• Cross-sell – identify cross-sell opportunities for existing customers and identify how they may be working with other lenders
• Collections strategies, stress testing and loss forecasting – build stronger models to identify customers that have ability and willingness to pay debts, stress test and forecast loss
• Peer benchmarking and industry trends – compare current portfolio against peers and the industry
• Recession planning – identify areas to adjust your portfolio to prepare for an economic downturn

“Through our Ascend Analytical Sandbox, we are connecting everything – the data, the technology and the insights to create real business opportunities for our clients,” added Lintner.

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Earlier this year, the solution was named best overall analytics platform at the Fintech Breakthrough Awards.

Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox was the first environment built on the Experian Ascend Technology Platform. Launched in 2018, the Experian Ascend Technology Platform is recognized as one of the most successful launches in Experian’s history. It’s currently being used by the top financial institutions globally with recent launches in regions including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil and Asia Pacific.

In North America, OneMain Financial turned to Experian to improve its risk modeling and credit portfolio management capabilities with the Ascend Analytical Sandbox. Since using the solution, the company has seen significant improvements in reject inferencing – a process that is traditionally expensive, manually-intensive and time consuming. According to OneMain Financial, the Ascend Analytical Sandbox has shortened the process to less than two weeks from up to 180 days.

“Experian Ascend Technology Platform and Ascend Analytical Sandbox is an industry gamechanger,” said OneMain Financial’s Senior Managing Director and Head of Model Development Michael Kortering. “We’re completing analyses that just weren’t possible before and we’re getting decisions to our clients faster, without compromising risk.”

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