Nilay Patel

Hello, and welcome to Decoder.

I'm Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems.

Today, I'm talking with Alex Lintner, who is the CEO of technology and software solutions at Experian, the credit reporting company.

Experian is one of those multinationals that's so big and complicated that it has multiple CEOs all over the world.

So Alex and I spent quite a lot of time at the beginning simply talking through the decoder questions so I could understand how Experian is structured, how it works, and how the kinds of decisions that Alex makes actually work in practice.

There's a lot there, especially since Alex is in charge of the company's entire tech arm.

That means he oversees big operations like security and privacy, and now, of course, AI.

All of which is always important, but even more critical when you factor in what kinds of information Experian collects and stores about

Well, literally everyone.

See, if you want to participate in the economy the way the vast majority of us would like to do, renting an apartment, buying a car, getting a job, applying for a mortgage or a student loan, you're part of Experian's ecosystem, almost whether you like it or not.

You'll hear Alex talk about consent a whole lot in this conversation, and he'll argue that you can opt out of the whole system.

But the reality for most people is that interacting with Experian is pretty much non-negotiable.

It's hard to do basically anything involving money without a credit score.

That's really the tension at the heart of a company like Experian.

Credit scores dominate so many aspects of our lives, and they're controlled and calculated in ways that most of us feel like we have very little direct influence over.

But at its heart, Experian's core service is data.

Data about people.

About their money and what they do with it.

The bills they pay or don't pay.

About the decisions we make.