Experian
Experian plc is a multinational data broker and consumer credit reporting company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Experian is a partner in USPS address validation. It is one of the "Big Three" alongside TransUnion and Equifax.
In addition to its credit services, Experian also sells decision analytic and marketing assistance to businesses, including individual fingerprinting and targeting. Like all credit reporting agencies, the company is required by U.S. law to provide consumers with one free credit report every year.
History
The company has its origins in Credit Data Corporation, a business which was acquired by TRW Inc. in 1968, and subsequently renamed TRW Information Services.In November 1996, TRW sold the unit, as Experian, to Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Just one month later, the two firms sold Experian to The Great Universal Stores Limited in Manchester, England, a retail conglomerate with millions of customers paying for goods on credit. GUS merged its own credit-information business, CCN, which at the time was the largest credit-service company in the UK, into Experian.
In October 2006, Experian was demerged from GUS and listed on the London Stock Exchange.
In August 2005, Experian accepted a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over charges that Experian had violated a previous settlement with the FTC. The FTC alleged that ads for the "free credit report" did not adequately disclose that Experian customers would automatically be enrolled in Experian's $79.95 credit-monitoring program.
In January 2008, Experian announced that it would cut more than 200 jobs at its Nottingham office.
Experian shut down its Canadian operations on 14 April 2009.
In March 2017, the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined Experian $3 million for providing invalid credit scores to consumers.
In October 2017, Experian acquired Clarity Services, a credit bureau specialising in alternative consumer data.
In May 2024, Experian acquired a strategic minority in Reward, a UK-based customer engagement and commerce media technology company.
In October 2024, Experian agreed to acquire Brazilian digital fraud prevention provider ClearSale for $350 million.
In October 2025, Experian shut down its Dutch operations after receiving a €2.7 million fine from the Dutch Data Protection Authority for illegally processing credit reference data on Dutch consumers.
Operations
In the United States, like the other major credit reporting bureaus, Experian is chiefly regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003, signed into law in 2003, amended the FCRA to require the credit reporting companies to provide consumers with one free copy of their credit report per 12-month period. Like its main competitors, TransUnion and Equifax, Experian markets credit reports directly to consumers. Experian heavily markets its for-profit credit reporting service, FreeCreditReport.com, and all three agencies have been criticised and even sued for selling credit reports that can be obtained at no cost.Its market segmentation tool, Mosaic, is used by political parties to identify groups of voters. In the British version there are 15 main groups, broken down into 89 hyperspecific categories, from "corporate chieftains" to "golden empty-nesters" which can be taken down to the level of individual postcodes. It was first used by the Labour Party, but then taken up by the Conservatives in the 2015 General Election campaign.