How ‘Forrest Gump’ Moments Prepared Experian’s CIO To Help Lead Its AI Transformation

The debate over the impact of AI continues to loom large over the market boom. But Experian stands as evidence of its transformative potential. Long entrusted to protect some of the most sensitive and valuable personal and financial data, the company is now capitalizing on its technology roots and harnessing next-generation tools to fight back against AI-empowered fraudsters, as well as give consumers greater control over their financial identity.

“We’re not just a credit bureau anymore,” Chief Innovation Officer Kathleen Peters told CIO News.

Today, revenue from software is now 35% of Experian’s business, a drastic difference from five years ago. And the company is wasting no time in introducing GenAI into production. For example, EVA, its AI-powered digital assistant, is already used by millions. And Experian recently signed a 10-year agreement with AWS that will help the company scale AI use cases even faster.  

One reason Experian can move so quickly is the trust it has built with consumers, regulators, and other enterprises. Many facets of its operations are already monitored for bias and other forms of credit risk. As a result, the company has the guardrails in place to scale safe and trustworthy AI use cases.

“We have been held accountable as trusted stewards of people’s most personal and private information and their financial identity since the company was founded,” Kathleen said. “That knowledge and that understanding … is going to be the differentiator as we think about the responsible and ethical use of AI.”

For Kathleen, leading this transformation represents the culmination of a career spent constantly on technology’s cutting-edge, from one of the first attempts at a global satellite telecommunications network to an application marketplace that pre-dated the Apple App Store.

“When I look back on my career, I start seeing common threads that I probably didn't recognize at the moment, like ‘Forrest Gump' moments,” Kathleen said. “This common thread of mobile phones, mobile devices, connected devices, and connected data weaved its way through my career choices.”

CIO News talked to Kathleen to learn how her career history prepared her for the AI era, the importance of the technology in fighting digital bad actors, and how Experian successfully moves AI investments from experiment to production.

‍A Career At Technology’s Frontier

Kathleen started her career at Motorola, working on a project codenamed Iridium. Clearly ahead of its time, Iridium was Motorola’s attempt at creating a global satellite phone network by blanketing the planet with low-orbit satellites. There were seven groups, each with 11 satellites, hence the name Iridium, an atom surrounded by 77 electrons.

This moonshot endeavor came at a time when people traveling overseas couldn’t simply extend their mobile service — they had to get a new phone altogether. Iridium aimed to make it possible for travelers to carry just one device. Of course, today that problem is largely non-existent. And while the market for satellite communications is now dominated by Starlink, the experience at Motorola introduced Kathleen to the fast-paced world of technology.

“It was very breakthrough at the time. Every day we were inventing. It was risky, it was high profile,” she recalled. “It set me on this career journey where I was just naturally attracted to bleeding edge, unproven areas of opportunity.”

After Motorola, Kathleen ventured into more business-related roles, including a stint at PalmSource, the maker of the Palm OS PDA operating system. There she was able to work on a very early version of what would become commonly known as an application store: “Palm was out there with third-parties offering downloadable apps for sale,” she said.

Now at Experian, many of these pioneering moments are coming together. Working at the frontier of mobile technology, Kathleen could see how quickly consumers were relying on their phones for all their daily needs — and how important new security measures were.

“It became clear to me that this was going to be yet another horizon that provides a lot of convenience and new opportunities and creatives for brands and businesses,” she said. At the same time, it was “a whole new threat surface for fraudsters,” Kathleen added.

And 12 years later, the fight against fraudsters is only getting more intense.

‍Fighting Fire With Fire

Today, Kathleen is instrumental in Experian’s pivot to becoming a leading technology organization. The company has long-relied on techniques like neural networks and machine learning in operations, particularly to fight fraud. But traditionally, that work was entrusted to data scientists and others with advanced technical knowledge. Now, GenAI is democratizing access to these technologies.

“AI and machine learning have been really powerful tools in helping to amass a lot of data to help predict likely frauds occurring in the future. But historically that was the realm of data scientists,” Kathleen noted. “GenAI flips so many things. Just as the browsers opened up the capacity and capability of the Internet to all kinds of people and companies, GenAI is going to open up all that power even more.”  

But while AI can be a major productivity and efficiency driver for companies, the technology is also super-powering fraudsters.

“Fraudsters are some of the most organized, motivated, creative people on the planet,” Kathleen said. “There’s a duty of care to make sure we are doing everything we can to help consumers and the businesses that serve them stay protected.”

This creates an AI arms race of sorts, one where Experian’s decades of experience in fraud detection and its existing governance frameworks provide crucial advantages.

‍Innovation Pathways

One of the ways Experian is moving quickly to embrace new technology is through its Innovation Lab. When the company first launched the effort 15 years ago, the center was purely research-driven. Now, it’s become a catalyst for new, revenue-driving technology products, like EVA.

The digital assistant started as a fairly simple, pre-programmed chatbot. But as a result of close partnership between the Innovation Lab and consumer product teams, EVA can now execute actions for users, like freezing their credit report, as well as provide personalized service.

The lab’s success is partially due to Innovation Pathways, a program that connects the Innovation Lab’s research to business needs. It “created common vocabulary across all different functions to talk about what are the challenges, who is the end user, why do we want to build this, and who are we building it for,” said Kathleen.

Beyond just growing revenue, Experian’s success at commercializing its research has helped to transform the core of the company. Instead of just being a trusted steward of financial data, Experian can deliver more secure, personalized financial services to both businesses and consumers.

“Now, we’re a technology company,” Kathleen said.