Story highlights:

• The Equifax AI Governance Program helps the company meet its obligations for using AI responsibly, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.
• In highly regulated financial environments, explainable AI is critical for transparent decision-making and safeguarding consumer interests.
• Through the first half of 2026, Equifax has over 450 approved or pending patents supporting its approach to AI.

Since 2018, Equifax has invested approximately $3 billion to complete the Equifax Cloud™, its cloud-native security and technology infrastructure. The company is now fully leveraging that foundation to accelerate AI across the enterprise — and it is committed to doing so in a transparent, trustworthy, fair, explainable, and secure manner.

Moving at that pace requires discipline. To ensure AI is being used responsibly as its use accelerates, Equifax has fully integrated AI governance into its operations and incorporated it into its Enterprise Risk Management program.

Equifax takes a “whole Board” approach to oversight of AI governance, meaning the full Board of Directors exercises direct oversight of AI-related risks and opportunities.

Governance Built on an Established Framework

Responsible, explainable AI is critical for transparent decision-making and safeguarding consumer interests. The Equifax AI Governance Program helps to ensure it is meeting its obligations for using AI systems appropriately, responsibly, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. Specifically, the program sets the strategic direction, provides global oversight, and defines the principles and practices that comprise Responsible AI at Equifax.

Similar to how Equifax manages cybersecurity and privacy risk, it has implemented an AI controls framework as the primary mechanism to comply with regulatory requirements, manage risk, and measure progress through regular controls testing.

The company’s AI controls framework is based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework and is integrated with its existing NIST-aligned cybersecurity and privacy controls framework.

Guardrails that Keep Pace with Innovation

To make sure the company’s controls work in day-to-day operations, Equifax has governance guardrails to score risks consistently, handle data correctly, and evaluate AI systems for accuracy, relevance, and fairness.

“These guardrails are important because our teams are constantly innovating,” said Harald Schneider, Equifax Global Chief Data & Analytics Officer. “We validate new models and attribute suites and are continuously monitoring existing models to make sure they are healthy and performing as expected.”

Explainability remains one of the central commitments of Equifax AI. It is important in ensuring that the decisions assisted by AI are fair, ethical, and understandable. Ultimately, explainability provides accountability in the use of AI, providing detail on what informed a decision.

Equifax performs due diligence before solutions go into production. Once a use case is approved, data scientists outline a production plan with other stakeholders that considers the impact on customers, the legalities, and compliance. This begins with an understanding of the model requirements, design, and timeline and continues through steps like testing, analysis, and correction all the way to implementation, auditing, and documentation.

Equifax has driven responsible AI innovation for more than a decade and through the first half of 2026, has over 450 approved or pending patents supporting its approach to AI. As it continues to accelerate the use of AI to innovate for future growth and efficiency, it’s focused on maintaining a strong governance program and exercising responsible AI use.