Financial Intelligence Tools Can Help You Protect Your Digital Identity and Build and Monitor Credit

In a Nutshell: A financial mess can be a chore to clean up. But financial intelligence tools can help you fix financial mistakes or prevent them from ever happening. IDIQ provides a suite of financial intelligence tools that help consumers prevent identity theft and build their credit. Consumers can leverage the company’s research to learn the tactics criminals use to steal identities.

They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day. The first time I heard that expression, I couldn’t imagine there were  people who thought it was built in a day and needed to be told otherwise. After all, Rome’s a sizable city, and it would be a true marvel if the Colosseum, let alone the entire Roman metropolitan area, had been built in a day.

But, like many phrases that have stood the test of time, this one isn’t meant to be taken literally. When someone tells you that Rome wasn’t built in a day, they’re conveying that great accomplishments can take time to complete. 

People who make poor financial decisions can end up with low credit scores. If that’s the situation you find yourself in, don’t worry. You can improve your credit score by making one smart financial decision after another.

Think of sound financial decisions as bricks you can use to build a solid credit foundation. You probably won’t be able to get your score to where you want it to be within a day, but, over time, you’ll be rewarded by your persistence. 

IDIQ provides consumers with financial intelligence to help them reach their goals. The company recently launched a new tool, CreditBuilderIQ, to assist those looking to boost their credit profiles. We caught up with Mike Scheumack, the Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer for IDIQ, to learn more about the company’s efforts to improve the financial health of its customers.

IDIQ formed in 2009, and the company’s initial focus was on helping people access their credit reports and scores and providing services to protect them from identity theft. Scheumack told us the company believes that your credit profile is where you’ll see the initial impacts of identity theft. As IDIQ grew, it became more of an overall financial intelligence company.

“Our brands span across identity theft protection into more of the financial wellness space with offerings such as CreditBuilderIQ and Credit & Debt, which is another product line we have that is very specific to financial wellness,” Scheumack told us. “IDIQ has really started to try to reach more into that financial intelligence area so we can dive into solving the different problems consumers are facing with finances.”

People enjoy reading mystery novels for the suspense and intrigue they bring into their lives. Something about not knowing what’s going to happen next is exciting to some readers. But, when it comes to your credit, the mystery of how to improve your score isn’t one consumers welcome.

IDIQ introduced CreditBuilderIQ in response to feedback from its customers. Scheumack told us that, when people learn how low credit scores affect the interest rates they pay for credit, they can take steps to improve them.

“We want to provide consumers across any age range with the ability to view their credit profile and see what’s impacting their score,” Scheumack told us. “Then we can give them a recommendation based on the experiences we’ve had over the years to help them improve their scores. We help them with building their credit, but we also educate the consumer so they can gain knowledge about how their actions can impact their credit scores.”

IDIQ provides tools to those who are looking to manage their credit through CreditBuilderIQ, but college students who are just starting to build their credit can also benefit from the resources it offers.

IDIQ harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve its solutions. Scheumack told us the company built an AI-based program to help customers understand what their credit profile should look like. IDIQ runs a customer’s credit report through its program to highlight actions the customer should take to improve their credit. 

The feedback from IDIQ’s AI program is unique to each person’s financial situation and credit profile. 

If you don’t think about your credit until you need to shop for a loan, then you can be caught off guard when you discover your score isn’t as high as you thought it was. Scheumack told us a lot of consumers aren’t interested in reviewing their credit report until they’ve been declined for credit. But those who are diligent in managing their finances can see significant savings on loans by accessing more favorable interest rates.

“The auto industry is famous for saying it’ll offer you 0% financing, but those rates are only available to a very small group of people that have excellent credit scores,” Scheumack told us. “Consumers need to realize that by working on some fundamental things with their finances they can save thousands and thousands of dollars over the life of a loan.”

The internet’s impact on modern life isn’t easy to quantify. The way we work, communicate with one another, and even how we shop for all those hard-to-find items on a loved one’s Christmas list have all been impacted by the World Wide Web. But some of the things the internet has introduced into life in the 21st century are more naughty than nice.

For example, the internet has opened doors for criminals around the world to access your financial information and target you for a scam. Scheumack told us people can be too trusting of what they encounter on social media. Deepfakes take advantage of a person’s trust and can trick them into divulging information that they should keep private.

“We’ve seen an increase in scams that are very specific to individuals versus what you used to see with phishing emails that would try to get information from you,” Scheumack told us. “The idea behind phishing messages was that thousands of emails would be sent out, and maybe one or two people would respond to them and end up getting scammed. But now with AI you’re able to use someone’s online information to develop a more targeted attack.”

Criminals also can create fake invoices, pose as legitimate companies, and send messages to people requesting they send them their credit, debit, or bank account numbers. 

Scammers can also use AI and automatic dialers to call thousands of people and request they provide information a criminal can use to defraud them. People need to be wary when someone calls requesting personal financial details from them, regardless of how realistic the voice on the other end of the line seems. Scheumack told us that some people send confidential information through text messages without verifying the other party’s identity.

“So many people out there are just so used to clicking on things on their phone that seem interesting to them,” Scheumack explained to us. “A scammer’s text message may just ask you for a small piece of data, but it’ll end up leading you down a path to revealing more personal information. And that can lead to identity theft.”

IDIQ conducts customer interviews and surveys to learn which financial issues its customers are struggling with. The company also gleans insights through calls it receives from fraud victims. Scheumack told us that when IDIQ hears about the same type of scam from numerous customers, it’ll investigate the scam to see if it’s occurring nationally or is limited to a smaller region.

“We also pay attention to a lot of Google trends to learn what people are searching for,” Scheumack told us. “That helps us understand what the overall interest is out there for different areas of financial education.”

Scheumack sits on the advisory board for the Identity Theft Resource Center, a nonprofit that works to mitigate the effects of identity theft. He told us that the knowledge he gains from the center drives research IDIQ undertakes to better understand incidents that can affect a consumer’s finances.

One way to identify a potential instance of identity theft is to monitor whether anyone’s attempted to have your mail sent to a different address. Scheumack told us that most of IDIQ’s competitors partner with the credit bureaus to monitor changes in address. 

“But it takes three notices to the credit bureaus before they’ll actually notify a consumer,” Scheumack told us.

IDIQ notifies its customers as soon as someone attempts to change their mailing address through the U.S. Postal Service as well as changes on their credit report, so they receive alerts faster. Scheumack told us this is important because criminals who succeed in changing your address can start getting your mail and applying for credit cards in your name.

“It typically takes 90 to 120 days for somebody to repair their identity after an identity theft event,” Scheumack told us. “And it could take even longer if it’s been occurring for quite a while. One of the things that helps us stand out is our speed to alert customers of issues.”