Equifax Named Financial Research and Data Company of the Year in 2026 FinTech Breakthrough Awards

EQUIFAX HAS BEEN NAMED THE "FINANCIAL RESEARCH AND DATA COMPANY OF THE YEAR" in the 10th annual FinTech Breakthrough Awards. This award recognizes Equifax for its commitment to providing a more complete, 360-degree view of consumer and small business financial landscapes. It also celebrates its successful cloud transformation to the industry’s only fully cloud-native infrastructure, its differentiated data assets and powerful analytics.

"This award validates our teams’ hard work to redefine the financial ecosystem by leveraging our differentiated data, advanced analytics and AI innovation,” said Jake Osborne, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Fintech and Strategic Markets at Equifax. “Providing modern fintechs with the differentiated insights they demand along with the robust fraud prevention they expect, is essential to empowering financial inclusion and more frictionless opportunities for consumers and small businesses. We thank Fintech Breakthrough for this special recognition.”

Equifax and its success is rooted in its unique blend of differentiated data and cloud technology. Equifax leverages a diverse range of proprietary assets, including:

• The Work Number®: A centralized, automated database that provides credentialed verifiers—such as lenders and employers—with real-time access to an individual's employment and income history for background checks and loan approvals.

• IXI™ Network: A database that aggregates anonymized data from a network of leading financial institutions to provide insights into household wealth, investment assets and spending capacity without exposing personally identifiable information.

• Alternative Data: is Fair Credit Reporting Act-complaint information not typically included in a traditional credit report such as rental, utilities and telecommunications payment histories. While traditional credit reports remain a strong indicator of credit history and past financial reliability, alternative data can responsibly expand access to credit and support a more inclusive economy.

• OneScore: A next-generation credit scoring model that combines traditional credit history with alternative data to provide a more predictive and inclusive view of creditworthiness, specifically for thin-file and "credit invisible" consumers.

• Business Verification Solution: A real-time, Know Your Business solution that helps lenders and businesses of all sizes make faster, more informed decisions about onboarding new accounts or vendors. Equifax recently enhanced this solution by incorporating data from The Work Number® and Digital Identity Trust.

Leveraging these data assets, Equifax generates best-in-class research and insights like the Wealth Trends Report, Digital Fraud Trends, Small Business Indices and Global Credit Trends. Equifax also offers extensive resources through its Market Pulse thought leadership platform, which delivers monthly and quarterly insights into the U.S. economy and consumer credit health.

The FinTech Breakthrough Awards is the premier awards program founded to recognize fintech innovators, leaders and visionaries from around the world in a wide range of categories, including digital banking, personal finance, cryptocurrencies, lending, payments, investments, regulatory technology, insurance technology and more. The 2026 program represents a milestone year, reflecting a decade of spotlighting the companies driving measurable innovation across the global financial technology ecosystem.