Craig Boundy, the chief executive of credit reporting giant Experian North America, says his company, with 1,300 local workers in Costa Mesa, helps ordinary people with financial inclusion.
“We stand for helping people everywhere be included in the financial ecosystem,” he told the Business Journal on Dec. 6.
To that end, he singles out Experian Boost, a financial tool that allows people to improve their credit scores, adding it is “free and easy to use.”
The service launched in 2019 allows Experian to include users’ on-time payment history from utility and telecom bills, as well as payments for streaming services, when building their credit scores.
As of earlier this year, the Boost program had helped nearly 4 million people in the U.S. grow their FICO score by nearly 50 million points, in turn giving them the opportunity to get a better chance of a loan approval or more attractive interest rates and terms.
Credit Education
While Boundy cites that key program as one point of the company giving back to the community, Experian also runs a host of other programs that benefit the area, having given close to $600,000 in donations within OC this year.
Of note, Experian awarded two Orange County-based organizations with grants this year—the OC Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and TGR Foundation, the education-focused charity founded by Tiger Woods.
The funds are for scholarships, events and programs that support credit education, small business entrepreneurship, homeownership, and financial inclusion efforts.
The company’s Asian American Employee Resource Group, meanwhile, raised thousands of dollars through #FeedYourHospital, which supported Asian-owned restaurants that were affected by anti-Asian racism, and provided meals to front-line healthcare workers at hospitals in Orange Country.
In total, Experian employees volunteered more than 900 hours to Orange County-based nonprofits and the company matched funds to those organizations that employees volunteered with and also donated to.
“Our people want to give back to the communities that they’re part of,” Boundy says.
The beneficiaries are chosen by groups of Experian employees. The in-kind donations within OC came to $80,000 this year.
“They’re not centrally or corporately decided things,” Boundy said. “They’re part of what our employees want to do.”
“The payback is simple,” according to Boundy.
In-House Efforts
Among internal efforts, the CEO emphasized that the Experian team successfully negotiated the challenges of the pandemic.
“Nobody at Experian missed a beat,” he said. “We’ve continued to perform well.”
“Our people continued to do a great job. We continued to pay bonuses. We continued to give people pay raises,” Boundy says.
He adds: “In appreciation of their efforts, we issued a ‘Thank You’ Share Award to employees this year to recognize perseverance through the pandemic,” according to the CEO.
“Our business grew all the way through the COVID pandemic.”
He said employees still have widespread flexibility in dividing their time between working from home and in the office.
