The FICO® IFRS 9 Impairment Management Solution includes predictive modeling for loss forecasting; software for high-speed model execution and consulting.[Read More]
In an effort to ensure that these scores consistently add value, and to ensure that they help rather than harm businesses, a group of firms recently convened to develop industry standards for cybersecurity ratings.[Read More]
It is anticipated that all new accounts will have to opt in for any offered increases, and this is expected to reduce the number of increases that take place.[Read More]
This is a guest post from Nikola Marcich with the Policy team at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. Walking into Bernie Madoff’s home in 2005, you would not have found piles of money under a mattress, behind a sofa or in his garage. At the time, Madoff had been running an elaborate Ponzi scheme through the wealth management arm of his business that reached $65 million by the time of his arrest in 2008, deliberately hiding the money intricately within the financial system. Serving as Madoff’s primary bank for over two decades, JP Morgan was one of the culprits of Madoff’s fraudulent actions and money-laundering tactics. In their innocent incompetence to identify clear red flags about Madoff’s returns and file a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR), JP Morgan’s was fined $1.7 billion in 2014. JP Morgan’s fine highlights the... [Read More]
FICO has been named a Category Leader in IFRS 9 solutions by Chartis Research in its report IFRS 9 Technology Solutions: Market Update 2017. “Like other regulatory mandates of the past decade, IFRS 9 is another transformational event for all financial institutions (FIs),” the report states. “In all likelihood, it will reduce FIs’ profits and retained earnings, increase their loan loss provisions, and have a negative impact on their regulatory and economic capital. To mitigate these impacts, FIs will have to rely heavily on the rigor of their data management and the quality of their data, and on the application of Expected Credit Loss (ECL) modeling and overall governance.” The FICO® IFRS 9 Impairment Management Solution includes industry-leading predictive modeling for loss forecasting; software for high-speed model execution, loss reporting, process governance and “what-if” scenario analysis; and strategy consulting from advisors with extensive domain and analytics expertise. “Effectively addressing the challenges of this... [Read More]
My telecommunications service provider put me through two hours of customer service hell when I was upgrading my set-top box. What should have been a simple plug-and-play switchover turned into an arduous journey through various customer service units. At no stage did I get the impression that there was a central location for my data, as I had to repeat my address and account details several times and rerun security checks across automated and human channels. This kind of friction in the customer experience is all too common, no matter what your spend with the provider. It is little surprise that UK service providers’ churn rates for multi-play packages can be up to 20% per year, with the cost to recruit a customer approximately £300 to £400. Compare that experience to digital-first companies like Amazon and Apple, which have remarkable stickiness and growth, where the experience is frictionless and most... [Read More]
The use of scores that rate a firm’s cybersecurity risk — such as the FICO® Enterprise Security Score — is picking up momentum. In an effort to ensure that these scores consistently add value, and to ensure that they help rather than harm businesses, a group of firms recently convened to develop industry standards for cybersecurity ratings. FICO joined this group, along with several Fortune 500 companies and a number of the country’s biggest banks, and I am proud of the principles we developed. By creating these principles, we sought to: Promote quality and accuracy in the production of security ratings Promote fairness in reporting Inject best-practice decision management governance standards into a new domain Include a coordinated process for adjudicating errors or inaccuracies in reported content Establish guidelines for appropriate use and disclosure of the scores and ratings Why were principles needed? One reason is that there is a... [Read More]
My last two posts in this update on UK cards discussed the growth in unused credit and the rising delinquencies in New cards. Both of these posts discussed credit line increases, but there’s one more factor that could weigh heavily on issuers’ plans. The FCA is preparing to introduce new guidelines for credit cards that will impact line increases. It is anticipated that all new accounts will have to opt in for any offered increases, and this is expected to reduce the number of increases that take place. The approach for existing customers should remain as per today, where customers have to reject the offer. However, customers who display a sustained propensity to pay the minimum payment (on non-promotional balances) will either have to opt in or be excluded from increases. Customers showing signs of persistent debt (based on how much they have paid in fees and interest versus reducing their balance)... [Read More]
African Bank, a large retail bank in South Africa, recently went through a large-scale restructuring in order to bring more efficiency, transparency and collaboration to the way it made decisions. Working with FICO, the bank applied a standards-based decision management methodology to fully modernize its decision system. Now that the new solution has been implemented, we spoke with Dawid Van Zyl, Program Executive of Credit Decisioning at African Bank, to learn more. Q: What challenges was African Bank facing with its existing credit decision process? Dawid: Our credit decision lifecycle was fragmented over different applications and teams. This was causing inefficiencies and missed opportunities for our executives to react to the market. We knew we needed to do a complete overhaul of the existing process in order to be effective and profitable. Q: How did you and the FICO team create a solution for this challenge? Dawid: The first step... [Read More]
If my last post on GDPR and collections left you feeling mildly depressed, you’re paying attention! Now that we’ve scoped out the difficulties, here are a couple of things you can do to prepare. And preparation, like compliance, is important: GDPR sets out some steep fines for non-compliance, and you don’t want your department — or your vendor — to be the trigger. 1. Create Your Data Inventory GDPR wants you to only use the data that is absolutely necessary. Whether your decisions are based on rules or algorithms, you’re going to have to show what data you are using and how it impacts decisions in collections. As someone executing collection strategies, you want to make sure neither you, your department nor the third parties serving you cause the business to be exposed. You need to make sure you understand where the data you’re using comes from, and prove that... [Read More]
A recent survey carried out on our behalf by research company Ovum found that 48% of organizations think that in a year’s time, an assessment of their cybersecurity will show improvement. Only 3% think that their cybersecurity position will have worsened. Most companies also think they are doing well compared to their competitors; a mere 6% think their cybersecurity is below average and 54% think they’re above average or a top performer. This is statistically unlikely. It seems that many are taking an optimistic view of their cybersecurity. Could a lack of objective measurement be to blame? Here’s what our survey participants said: It is encouraging to see that 94% carry out some form of assessment. However, consideration must be given as to how objective the methods used are. 38% of respondents say they self-assess based on their own criteria, this is the largest and possibly the most worrying category.... [Read More]
The Second Payments Services Directive or PSD2 will bring tremendous changes to the payments world in the coming months. But what does it mean for risk managers? That’s one issue we grappled with at FICO’s recent EMEA Risk Leadership Forum. Today I believe we have more questions than answers. Bear in mind that the goal of PSD2 is to enable customer migration and incent market competition. It’s the finance equivalent of being able to keep your phone number when you switch providers. That’s fantastic if you’re a new entrant, not so fantastic if you’re a bank being forced to share your accounts’ details with new competitors. But PSD2 is more than just open banking. It creates two new players – the Payment Initiation Services Provider (PISP) and the Account Information Services Provider (ASIP). While most banks will be one or both of these, so will many other market participants, such... [Read More]
As new countries such as those in the Nordics embrace contactless payments, people are asking about the impact on fraud. We discussed this last month at the DT Fraud Conference 2017, where Peter Bayley from Visa and I debated some of the issues arising. The good news is that contactless doesn’t appear to increase fraud. But it could. The first thing to note here is that the type of fraud consumers worry about is hugely unlikely. This is “proximity intercept,” where a card’s signal is grabbed by a fraudster’s device. The fear of this is played on by the manufacturers of physical RFID wallets, and sometimes even by the media. It sounds plausible but has not proven to be a big problem. The more likely potential threat of contactless is actually more complicated, and involves “disowned” transactions where the consumer fails to recall a transaction; in extreme circumstances this can... [Read More]