Reimagining credit, cash flow, and consumer empowerment

Hey everyone, welcome to an episode of The Ledger and this time coming to you from the Bonneville Salt Flats. Did I say that right Scott? You said that right, the Bonneville Salt Flats. Amazing and we are joined by Triani Chang.

Thank you so much for commuting all the way out here. Amazing. I I know you did it just for this podcast. It wasn't for all the other cool things Lone Pro is doing today.

The helicopter ride that you were mentioning earlier. That was where this beautiful setting out here. We should have recorded it from the helicopter. Okay.

Wait a second. Okay, maybe on the next episode, that's what we'll do. Next year. Triani, for anyone that is not super familiar with you and doesn't have any chance to talk to you out here today, give us a little bit about your background in FinTech.

Sure, so I've been in FinTech, payments, financial services, brokerage, some sort of my own rotation program for the last couple of decades. A self-inflicted rotation program. I love that. So what are some of the companies that you've worked at before?

Because I know there's some big names in there. Sure, so my first job, big financial services job was at Charles Schwab & Company, the brokerage and wealth management company. I think I've heard of that one before. I think it rings a bell.

And then I went to Visa, then Synchrony, and now I'm at Experience. Amazing, all right, cool. So how has your career evolved? And I'd love you to kind of walk us through that journey a little bit because I know there's a number of people listening to this podcast that might be just starting their careers in FinTech too.

Sure, well, I actually had a startup background prior to that. I spent 10 years in operating roles in Silicon Valley. I'm just launching things going from seed to scale and product innovation, strategy, who's dev, which is pretty much everything, the kind of generalist special on that. And I really wanted to do something that involved technology, but also had a positive impact on people.

And I'm an immigrant. I come from an immigrant family. I'm a first generation here in the U.S.

It really struck me that most people in this country have a kind of a fraught relationship with money. I mean, it's a little bit like I think about it as almost like where people have anxiety, stress, shame, guilt. And I knew that places like Schwab, where I first started in a strategy role, that we could make an impact on how people saved and could retire for the things they needed. Health care in this country as well.

I mean, there's such a day to day element to financial services in our lives. Yeah. Johnny, let me ask you this. You've got such a great background.

And, you know, given some of the experiences you've had, you know, you're at Experian now. everyone everyone knows Experian but let me ask this what are like maybe some or one of the misconceptions people might have about about Experian? Sure Experian is known in the U.S.

to be one of the places you go and get your credit score. Mm-hmm. Right so I guess in the credit I just got a mortgage so exactly definitely was was used in the last couple months came up in in the topic conversation so in the lending and credit underwriting and servicing jargon that's a credit bureau or credit reporting agency. And to me, when I joined, I actually joined the consumer services side of Experian, which was a revelation in itself that there was a direct relationship.

That existed. Oh my gosh. There are direct relationships with millions of consumers in the U.S.

and globally, about 200 million folks who are members and who work with us day to day. But that's one, is that we do a lot more than just credit bureau stuff, including data and analytics and intelligence that comes from all those things. You've got software platforms. We work with all kinds of clients in a variety of industries from marketing to healthcare to auto to public sector.

It pretty amazing how deep and wide the company is Yeah that interesting You guys have been doing more partnerships and stuff lately too which I found interesting just like given the whole conversation on open banking at this point too but you recently did a partnership with Plaid Can you walk us through that a little bit just given everything going on? Absolutely. Yeah, that was one of ours. I'm happy to say.

Plaid and Experian on the division that I belong to is called financial services and data. So think of that as the core B2B business in the U.S. that is what you're familiar with in terms of the experience of what you'd expect.

So the Consumer Bureau, the Small Business Commercial Bureau, decisioning, data quality, our sister organizations within fraud and identity, as well as marketing services, et cetera. And then organizationally, we also have other verticals like auto and healthcare, mortgage verifications, et cetera. So some of this is really around cashflow. And for us, teaming up with Plaid allowed us to bring an end-to-end and much more seamless solution in cashflow analytics.

So many people are interested in cashflow these days. I think we're all sold on that becoming another element of how we do underwriting and servicing in a world what people already have, loans or installment programs. But this allows us to break some of the impasse that was the cold start problem in the industry for cashflow analytics. Trani, along those lines, I mean, you've seen, you know, now cashflow, you've got data.

You've seen a lot of, in your career, a lot of shifts, a lot of trends. What do you think you can learn from some of the shifts and trends that you've seen? And how do you think that applies, whether it's related to now, like what you're doing with cashflow and data or anything else that you're seeing? Yeah, I think if you were to zoom out of at least the last 100 years, let's say, of banking and financial services in this country, I mean, everything from the Wells Fargo iconic stagecoach where he physically went into banks.

There was actual money exchange, loan originations was reams of paperwork that somebody did somewhere. A wealth manager is a whole other thing. I remember filling out just stacks of paperwork about who you are and your taxes and all the rest of it. I mean, now we can go into a grocery store and pay with our watch, pay with our phone, pay with our hand, you know, in a Whole Foods.

I think the evolution and revolution to me is largely based in technology or emerging, you know, revolutionary changes like AI. And then, you know, further out there, I think in terms of the mild to wild, to borrow one of my old consulting partners' terminologies, The more wild stuff with DeFi and blockchain and crypto and USDC and stablecoin, all those things, as opposed to faster payments, banking as a service, wealth management as a service, just being able to do digital applications and have mobile banking.

So to me, it's all a different way to hopefully meet the needs of the end consumers in the small businesses or the commercial businesses that we're serving. But ultimately, it's really about the human needs. You were part of the team that launched Smart Money as well, right? Can you talk a little bit about that process?

Sure. So let me explain what it was. So Experience Smart Money is a digital banking program offered through Experian Consumer Services, which I was happy to be at the helm of at the very beginning with me and my team. The first product is a credit building checking account with a debit card.

And so our award-winning Experian Boost is used by tens of millions of people in this country to do everyday things that will help you build your credit very easily. So paying your Spotify bill, your Netflix bill, your rent, your insurance, your utilities. You can do that for a period of time, and it creates what in the credit bureau world is called a trade line. So by just doing everyday things you able to help to grow start in some cases and build that credit score What Experience Smart Money does is a digital checking account with the debit card as mentioned but it embeds Boost So everything that coming through that checking account automatically goes into the scoring and helps you grow that credit.

Triana, I know, you know, I'm familiar with the product, as you know. Absolutely. Very familiar. Let me ask you this.

You were, you know, right at the beginning of the product, kind of through all of the stages and the launch. What are some of the key learnings that you have and going through, you know, kind of building that type of product that you can share with our folks? Sure. To me, it's really good product design.

And our first principles were really around making it easy, accessible, digital first. So it is a mobile banking and a digital banking product. There are no branches. We use various partners, including a sponsor bank to create the program, and we run it as the program manager.

It is embedded and is part and parcel of the Experian Consumer Services ecosystem, which for those who are not as familiar with that, you can, of course, do all the things around getting access to your credit score and growing your credit score. But we also have a whole other set of services that if you've seen some of the latest ads with Sam Richardson, who's one of the actors on Ted Lasso, one of my series. It's a very good series. It is.

And the tagline right now in the campaign is around your BFF at Experian, which is your big financial friend. I love it. So that person helps you do everything from create budgeting, pay your bills, cancel subscriptions you don't need. And then eventually, once your score is up to a point where lenders will consider you for credit cards, personal loans, things of that nature, as well as insurance.

And so we're always rolling out new innovations within the consumer services world. And the digital banking product is certainly part and parcel of that. I thought, Triana, you were going to say your biggest learning is that you forecasted the Travis Kelsey, Taylor Swift relationship. For those of you who didn't see any of the ads, the Experian debit card spokesperson was Travis Kelsey.

And those ads hit like literally like it was like two or three weeks before like this big relationship was announced. So I had to for my daughter mention something about Taylor Swift. You got him at his budget rate. That's what it would cost now.

Yeah. So the only thing I'll say about that is my marketing team, a bunch of geniuses and a lot of favors they're prepared. So we were able to get him and sign him before he started dating Taylor Swift. And it was amazing.

So I think the first NFL game she went to was just before we launched. So we launched, I remember this to the day, launched on October 1st. during an NFL weekend where it was a Kansas City Chiefs game versus the Jets. Yeah.

Okay. And that was the first big game where everybody was just gaga over this maybe relationship. And so all of her fans and that whole Taylor Swift universe, plus all of the NFL fans, and they kept panning to her during the game. But I will say with some just, you know, completely tongue in cheek, you know, speculation that we must have had something to do with their recent engagement as well.

I like it. I mean, it's two years later and they're going the distance. Do you have like another campaign coming out? I know.

It's like, you know, where's the paparazzi right now? Because Triani's going to reveal like who the next big couple is. Can you get Taylor Swift on our podcast? Oh, I love that.

I love that. I have a question. You mentioned a lot about helping consumers boost their credit scores and everything. And I remember when I was first getting into FinTech, one of the things people talked about a lot was using FinTech to better the financial lives of people.

It feels like we have made steps in that direction with that product being one example of that, but it feels like there's so much more yet to do. How do you see AI playing a role in that and how are you guys using that at Experian? Yeah, I think there's nobody in the industry not thinking seriously about AI and certainly we fall in that camp. There are a few things about AI I think worth noting One is garbage in garbage out around data because it really about data and the intelligence and derivative product of data The other is that with things like cash flow that's consumer permissioned by nature and that's part of the plaid relationship as well is this is everything within the control of the consumer or the small business whoever is on the receiving end of being the end client, the willingness of people to trust us in order to grow what they want, which is their financial lives, their credit scores, the ability to access credit for everything from paying for your kids, college fund to your mortgage or helping out your parents as they get older.

All those things are tremendously important in our lives. And so I think AI is another layer that helps us get to a different level of efficiency. And some of the interactions, if anybody's done anything with customer service and human beings, I found myself thinking, I think I'd rather be chatting with a really well-designed bot because it would just cut to the quick for what I need. It has almost no emotion.

I personally like the digital experience, and sometimes I like talking to folks on the phone, but only if they're really efficient and they don't, for instance, make me validate my identity three times. And, you know, so hopefully it goes into something that is really well designed, both the jet AI stuff that's more front end as well as the back end work with agent. Yeah. Very cool.

I love it. Well, you can tell that we're getting towards the end here because the sun has come out and it's like it's like it feels like it's the beginning of an Elton John song, the sun coming out on our podcast here. But Trani, anything else for our folks here that you can think of about you or anything as you think about kind of the future of Experian or of payments? Thank you for the time here.

It's a beautiful location. I'm hoping that the next few years and certainly coming months will reveal a number of things that we're doing. It's exciting and personally motivates me to hop out of bed and do what we do every day. and certainly the greater ecosystem and financial services and payments and fintech.

I think we all have a heart to help the customers at the other end of the agentic or the phone line or loans or loan servicing. And I think that there's a lot more to come. I have one quick question. So we had Mike from Vault on our podcast.

I think it was like April or May. And they're basically doing it where you can use Bitcoin as part of your, putting it against a loan that you would go get and stuff like that. Do you guys see any future where the amount of Bitcoin or stable coin or anything that you own is taken into account in terms of your credit score? That's a good question.

I think anything's possible. It's some of these, again, wilder technologies and I use that in quotes. With the air quotes. As I'm sure the internet was wild at some point and it's now just, it's part of our lives.

It's still pretty wild. You're right, you're right, actually. That was so true. We know what you mean, Triana.

We know what you're saying there for sure, we get it. So I think there's a lot going on in that space, the Genius Act, all that. People are building towards that. There's some fundamental changes that we need to happen if people are going to embrace USTC.

I believe it was, I think the administration said that they wanted Bitcoin to be considered in like Fannie and Freddie loan applications for mortgages and stuff like that. So it feels like we're moving in that direction. I guess it's just a matter of exactly how we do it. Exactly.

Yeah, no, it's a super interesting space to follow. It is, it is. Never a dull day. Never a dull day in any of FinTech.

We're a little secluded out here. It feels like we're getting a small break from everything going on in FinTech for a moment. Absolutely. Amazing.

Well, thank you so much again for joining us. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jirani. Bye.