Lenders in the fast-growing credit economy of India can now tap into Fair Isaac’s global-standard FICO® credit risk technology, thanks to a recently announced alliance with High Mark Credit Information Services of India.

As India's credit reporting system expands, Fair Isaac will leverage that growth in future versions of Global FICO® score to continue offering maximum risk assessment power to High Mark's members.

"By bringing together the cutting-edge technology of High Mark, India's newest credit bureau, with our own deep analytic experience and innovation, this alliance will create the breakthrough risk management solutions that Indian lenders need for rapid growth," said Lisa Nelson, vice president of Global Scoring for Fair Isaac.

Lenders will be able to use Global FICO® score at all stages in the consumer credit lifecycle to improve decisions throughout the lending process, from account acquisition and account origination to full portfolio management.

"We have seen rapid development by many Indian lenders who now have sophisticated analytical and decision-making capabilities. Global FICO® score will enhance their existing toolsets with unique technology, allowing them to take their risk management capabilities to an even higher level," says Dr. Anil M. Pandya, executive chairman of High Mark Credit Information Services, which is awaiting its certificate of operation from the Reserve Bank of India.

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Fair Isaac and IBM recently announced a significantly expanded strategic alliance to create and deliver end-to-end financial services solutions, powered by IBM's open technology, to help clients better integrate information across the enterprise.

As part of the alliance, Fair Isaac will optimize a new generation of its decision management software on the following IBM middleware: DB2, WebSphere, Rational tools, Lotus software, including Portal, and the IBM System z and System p platforms.

The agreement includes joint development, marketing and sales of service oriented architecture (SOA)-based financial services solutions. Fair Isaac will lead with IBM Global Business Services on systems integration for clients as part of its shared services delivery model.  

Additionally, Fair Isaac will embed and use IBM middleware, including WebSphere, DB2, Rational tools and Lotus software, as the foundation of its next generation Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) solutions.

As a result, financial services clients using Fair Isaac's new EDM suite, built on the industry-leading Blaze Advisor® business rules management system and predictive modeling tool Model Builder, will be able to take advantage of SOA and Information on Demand (IOD) software to share data across multiple applications, including account opening, customer and account management, fraud, and collections and recovery.

"Both Fair Isaac and IBM fully embrace and support SOA to deliver open-standards business applications to any number of users regardless of their existing technology infrastructure," said Mark Hanny, vice president of strategic partnerships, IBM.

"Our joint clients can now more easily overcome one of the key challenges of implementing an SOA infrastructure to deliver Information on Demand — managing, integrating and unlocking value from their business information — and become more flexible to better compete globally."

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Fair Isaac and Magnum Communications, Limited, today announced that Magnum will distribute Fair Isaac's FICO® Expansion® credit risk score to financial institutions. 

The FICO® Expansion® score assesses the credit risk of consumers who have minimal or no credit history on file by tapping non-traditional sources of consumer data not found at the national credit reporting agencies.  By using the FICO® Expansion® score for these consumers — including recent immigrants and young adults — businesses can make more financial services available to more people who have missed out on opportunities simply because they lack a traditional credit history.

"Through this strategic relationship with Fair Isaac, Magnum clients gain a new tool for making better decisions and confidently expanding into the traditionally credit-underserved market," says Carl Eikhoff, CEO for Magnum. "Lenders of all sizes can use Magnum's powerful technology solutions and services to easily tap into the widely respected FICO scoring services to make smarter credit risk decisions."  

Under the agreement, lenders will use Magnum's robust credit data acquisition system, CREDICHECK IV, and a secure web interface to access the FICO® Expansion® score. The scoring data has been pre-mapped to Magnum's RapUp data analysis tool, enabling Magnum to bring the score online quickly for easy client implementation.

"Industry results show that the FICO® Expansion® score delivers the same highly predictive, objective risk evaluation for credit-underserved consumers that businesses have come to expect from the industry-standard FICO® score," said Tom Quinn, vice president of Global Scoring for Fair Isaac. "Providing access to our score through Magnum, a highly respected value-add platform provider, helps lenders quickly and confidently incorporate the FICO® Expansion® score into their current origination decision strategies."

FICO® Expansion® score aligns with Fair Isaac's industry-standard FICO® score for quicker adoption by lenders and combined coverage of as many as 50 million more American consumers than can be addressed by any competing credit risk model. Lenders nationwide are using FICO® Expansion® scores today to better control their risk when extending credit opportunities to new consumers.

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