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Derek Smith has served as ChoicePoint’s CEO since the company went public in 1997 adding the chairman’s responsibilities two years later. In 2005 ChoicePoint generated record revenues of more than $1 billion an increase of 15 percent from the previous year.
As the company has grown Smith and the company’s senior leadership have recognized that the two areas in which ChoicePoint has the greatest expertise are in identifying and helping to address the economic and physical risks faced daily by American consumers and business.
ChoicePoint’s efforts to help mitigate economic risks are most evident in its extensive work with the insurance industry. Virtually every insurance carrier in the country has shared with ChoicePoint its claims history allowing the company to combine that information with other data sources and do the analysis necessary to fairly price home and auto insurance policies. As importantly ChoicePoint works with thousands of businesses large and small to perform pre-employment background screening allowing millions of Americans every year to get the jobs they seek.
Under Smith’s leadership ChoicePoint’s work doing pre-employment background checks extends beyond corporate America deep into the heart of the country’s non-profit community. Every year the company performs virtually free-of-charge background checks for some of the nation’s largest non-profits. Over a three-year period ChoicePoint found more than 86 000 people with undisclosed criminal convictions applying to work with children or other at-risk populations. Of those more than 500 were convicted sex offenders.
A relatively new but growing area of economic risk is identity theft and ChoicePoint itself was one of dozens of companies government agencies and educational institutions in recent years to be involved in an unlawful data access incident. At Smith's direction ChoicePoint responded by taking a number of important steps to become an industry leader in zealously protecting consumers’ information from those who would use it unlawfully. Additionally ChoicePoint is the first company of its kind to announce the creation of a consumer Ombudsman position. Charged with working directly for consumers in resolving any disputes that may arise from the company’s work Smith’s intention is to make the company more transparent and responsive to the millions of Americans whose lives ChoicePoint touches each year.
On the physical risk side ChoicePoint works every day with local state and national police agencies to provide them the data and software necessary to help stop crime and capture criminals. ChoicePoint’s DNA laboratory assisted in the identification of victims of the World Trade Center attacks while the Maryland State Police used the company’s software to help locate the DC snipers. Likewise the Transportation Security Administration used ChoicePoint to conduct background checks on nearly 100 000 applicants for security screener positions in less than six months.
Guided by Smith's long-held desire to make society safer through the appropriate use of information ChoicePoint has also forged a relationship with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This partnership provides NCMEC with access to ChoicePoint's data software and manpower and has led to the recovery of more than 80 children in recent years.
Smith is the author of two books on privacy The Risk Revolution: Threats Facing America & Technology’s Promise for a Safer Tomorrow and A Survival Guide in the Information Age. Prior to launching ChoicePoint Smith held executive positions within Equifax Inc. the former parent of the business that would become ChoicePoint. Smith holds an undergraduate degree from Penn State University and a graduate degree from Georgia Tech. He is married and the father of two children. | 