Experian 2016 Annual Report Download - page 22

20
Increasing competition 1 2 3 4 5 6
Risk trend Description Examples of control mitigation
Increasing Our competitive landscape continues to evolve,
with traditional players reinventing themselves,
emerging players investing heavily and new
entrants making large commitments in new
technologies or new approaches to our markets,
including marketing, consumer services, and
business and consumer credit information.
There is a risk that we will not respond
adequately to such business disruptions or our
products and services will fail to meet changing
consumer demand and preferences.
• We are committed to continued research and investment
in new data sources, people, technology and products to
support our strategic plan.
• We carry out detailed competitive and market analyses.
• We continue to develop new products that leverage our
scale and allow us to deploy capabilities into new and
existing markets and geographies.
• We use rigorous processes to identify and select our
development investments, so we can effectively introduce
new products and services to the market.
Potential impact Changes from 2015
Price reductions may reduce our margins,
market share and results of operations, or
harm our ability to obtain new clients or retain
existing ones. We might also be unable to
support changes in the way our businesses and
clients use and purchase information, affecting
our operating results.
We increased our focus on understanding the external
environment and competitor activities during our annual
strategic planning cycle and executed ongoing corporate
intelligence monitoring. We established working groups to
understand emerging business models in our core markets
(for example, payments and marketplace lending) and build
specific response action plans. We also increased our focus on
developing responses from cross-business unit teams, building
the operating mindset of ‘One Experian’.
Data ownership, access and integrity 1 2 4 5 6
Risk trend Description Examples of control mitigation
Stable
Our business model depends on our ability to
collect, aggregate, analyse and use consumer
and client information. There is a risk that
we may not have access to data because of
consumer privacy and data accuracy concerns,
or data providers being unable or unwilling to
provide their data to us or imposing a different
fee structure for using their data.
• We monitor legislative and regulatory initiatives, and
educate lawmakers, regulators, consumer and privacy
advocates, industry trade groups, clients and other
stakeholders in the public policy debate.
• We use standardised selection, negotiation and
contracting of provider agreements, to address delivery
assurance, reliability and protections relating to critical
service provider relationships.
• Our legal contracts define how we can use data and
provide services.
• We analyse data to make sure we receive the best value
and highest quality.
Potential impact Changes from 2015
Our ability to provide products and services
to our clients could be affected, leading to a
materially adverse impact on our business,
reputation and/or operating results.
We continue to enter into long-term contracts with data
providers and secure access to data sources through strategic
partnerships. In addition, we monitor emerging business
models that make use of alternative data assets for credit-
based decision making, to understand the value, accuracy
and availability of these assets. We are investing in several
initiatives to provide greater assurance over the integrity of data
provided to us and are participating in ongoing discussions
about the practices of companies that resell consumer data to
commercial, government and not-for-profit entities. Momentum
towards reporting of positive data continues in some countries
and we continue to advance positive data in countries such as
Brazil, India and Australia.
Strategic report •
Principal risks – identifying
and managing risk continued
Principal risks – identifying and managing risk