Experian acquires fintech to boost open data offering

Experian A/NZ has announced the purchase of three-year-old Australian fintech Look Who’s Charging (LWC) to improve its open data product offering.

The value of the sale was not disclosed. However, Andrew Black, managing director of Experian A/NZ, said the acquisition will combine Experian’s global open data solutions with LWC’s capabilities, allowing the credit reporting and business analytics giant to provide companies with an aggregation and categorisation solution and granular insights to apply across the business.

According to Experian, LWC has solved the problem of unrecognised bank transactions by providing instant clarification of the merchant behind the transaction. LWC’s data is integrated directly into multiple banks’ digital platforms, allowing card and bank statement transactions to be categorised and displayed “in an easy to understand way, in real time”.

“If a transaction is unable to be categorised accurately, it is often classed as ‘unknown’, which can result in decisions impacting consumers being based on limited data. This can have a big knock-on effect if, for example, banks are using one platform to help a customer understand their own income and expenditure, and another to decide what loan they can afford,” Mr Black said. 

The Experian A/NZ managing director added that the LWC integration will mean its customers will be able to “lend more responsibly, while enhancing their fraud checks and reducing their call centre traffic for unrecognised transaction queries, as well as ensuring consumers have a greater understanding of their financial situation.

According to the credit reporting giant, more than 1 billion transactions are categorised every month through LWC’s platform.

Experian noted the timeliness of the deal, with the Consumer Data Right recently passing both houses of Parliament and the Australian banking sector transitioning to an open data environment as part of the open banking regime. 

“Bringing Look Who’s Charging and our innovative solutions together will help Australian organisations, and ultimately consumers, as open banking standards are adopted in Australia,” Ben Elliott, CEO of Experian APAC, commented.

Meanwhile, founder of Look Who’s Charging Stuart Grover said the fintech will be able to take advantage of Experian’s scale. 

“We have an opportunity to help solve more of the immediate problems faced by Australian consumers and financial institutions, whilst the Look Who’s Charging solution is also rolled out to other key markets around the world,” Mr Grover said. 

Find out more about how you can prepare for open banking and use customer data more effectively in The Adviser Live webcast for the Responsible lending series: How to harness your data to create a goldmine, run in partnership with Choice Aggregation.

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