iA Financial Automates Underwriting with FICO Platform
Using FICO® Platform, iA Financial is advancing toward 80% underwriting automation, improving efficiency, and enhancing its client and advisor experience in Canada.
Redefining Underwriting for a Digital Future
iA Financial Group, a leading Canadian insurance and wealth management provider, serves over five million clients and manages close to $260 billion in assets. The company made the strategic decision to deploy FICO® Platform to advance and accelerate its underwriting automation. This shift allows a large number of underwriting decisions to be made in real-time by leveraging FICO Platform. This strategic move solidifies its leadership in the mass and mid-market individual life insurance sector in Canada.
Looking to strengthen its underwriting process, iA focused on expanding automation, speeding up decision-making, and enhancing the onboarding experience to support faster and more precise underwriting. By leveraging FICO Platform, iA has gained greater control over underwriting workflows, accelerating product implementation and enabling more refined risk assessments.
“With FICO Platform, we are evolving our underwriting process to be faster, more precise, and more responsive to our clients’ needs," said Philippe Cleary, vice president, Underwriting, New Business & Claims, Individual Insurance, Savings and Retirement, iA Financial Group. "By increasing automation and refining advisor workflows, we’re delivering a seamless experience that allows more hard-working Canadians to access the protection they need. Plus, these improvements not only streamline current processes but also pave the way for the future automation of more complex decisions, ultimately driving efficiency and accuracy in our operations.”
Smarter Workflows with Greater Control
This strategic investment has provided iA with deeper insights and greater visibility into policy submissions, enabling them to optimize the application process and improve policy conversion rates. Additionally, FICO® Platform has strengthened iA’s ability to manage risk exposure while adhering to strict regulatory standards, in order to provide its clients with the peace of mind and confidence of having invested in sound and secure insurance products. This shift supports iA’s broader strategy of combining advanced digital technology with human expertise, reinforcing its leadership in Canada’s life insurance industry.
Industry Recognition for Intelligent Innovation
"iA’s implementation of FICO Platform showcases how AI-powered decisioning is reshaping the insurance industry by delivering exceptional value to its clients,” said Nikhil Behl, president, software at FICO. "By automating processes and enabling real-time decision-making, iA is driving smarter operations, reducing costs, and delivering a superior experience for clients, reinforcing its leadership and strength in the insurance sector."
We are proud to award iA Financial Group a 2025 FICO® Decision Industry Vanguard Award. The FICO Decisions Awards recognize organisations that are achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions. This innovation by iA Financial Group demonstrated use of best practices; project scale, depth and breadth; and innovative uses of technology. To see the full list of 2025 FICO Decisions Awards winners, check out: https://www.fico.com/en/decisionawards.
How FICO Can Help With Intelligent Insurance Decisioning
Discover how to replace outdated underwriting systems and reduce manual tasks with FICO® Platform — enabling end-to-end automation, minimizing human error, and enhancing the client experience.
Our data-driven approach supports the creation and deployment of sophisticated underwriting rules, while machine learning capabilities help eliminate manual underwriting bottlenecks and improve accuracy at scale.
Explore how you can streamline underwriting workflows, reduce risk, and drive operational efficiency.
- Explore FICO Platform
- Read Gartner’s report, Market Guide for Decision Intelligence Platforms
- Discover our solutions for insurance
- Read our blog on Why the Insurance Industry Needs Decision Platforms
- Read our blog on AI and Hyper-Personalization for the Insurance Industry
- Experience FICO Platform in action through the story of Digital Jane – showcasing intelligent decision automation in a real-world customer journey.
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FICO® Score High Achievers: Is Age the Only Factor?
<p>FICO’s latest research on <a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/risk-compliance/us-credit-quality-rising-the-beat-goes-on/" target="_blank">national FICO® Score distribution</a> shows that US credit quality continues to trend upwards, with an increasing number of consumers scoring in the highest scores ranges. Given that, we decided it was time to refresh our study on “<a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/risk-compliance/infographic-what-does-a-high-credit-scorer-look-like/" target="_blank">FICO® Score high achievers</a>,” where we examine the credit behavioural profiles of consumers with higher credit scores.</p> <p>As expected, our latest study showed that older people generally have higher scores, as has been the case in our <a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/risk-compliance/age-before-beauty-credit-worthiness-before-youth/" target="_blank">past research</a>. This is largely because they have trade lines that have been open longer, which leads to higher scores (assuming the trade lines are in good standing and all other things equal). The most credit savvy among you will remember that length of credit history accounts for roughly 15% of the overall <a href="http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx" target="_blank">FICO® Score calculation</a>.</p> <p>But for younger consumers, it isn’t too helpful to say, “just wait until you are 50 years old, and that will fix things!” Thus, I decided to dive deeper with our analysis, including looking at the credit behavioural characteristics of younger consumers with high FICO® Scores.</p> <p>In this analysis, I looked at credit characteristics for the two highest score bands, 750-799 and 800-850, which have about 16% and 23% of the population, respectively. I further broke this down by looking at the characteristics of the youngest 15% in each group, which occurs at age 29 for the 750-799 group and 43 for the 800-850. We used FICO<strong>®</strong> Score 9 for our analysis, and examined typical variables of the categories that go into the make-up of the score.</p> <p><a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FICO-Score-High-Achiever-table.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-29367" src="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FICO-Score-High-Achiever-table.png" alt="fico-score-high-achiever-table" width="715" height="747" /></a></p> <p>Since there’s a lot to dissect in this chart, I’ll highlight a few findings that struck me: <ul> <li><strong>Credit history.</strong> Higher scores are undoubtedly associated with a longer time on file. What’s striking is the higher average time on file for the 800+ group, both overall and for revolving accounts (the most common trade line). Clearly, it helps to start credit use early in life – but that’s not the sole determining factor for high scoring. The younger cohorts in both the 800+ and 750-799 groups have time on file medians significantly less than their older counterparts.</li> <li><strong>New credit.</strong> High credit scorers do, in fact, pursue new credit. We see little variation in months since last trade line opening and last inquiry among all groups observed.</li> <li><strong>Pay on time.</strong> As you might expect, the further in the past the delinquency, the higher the score – and that’s <u>if</u> a delinquency ever happened. 95% of the 800+ people and 72% of the 750-799 group have never been delinquent, which is a striking contrast to the 57% for the total population. The percentages for the younger groups are even higher, especially so for the 750-799ers. Collection items are also scarce for these high scorers. While 23% of the national population have collection items greater than $99, the figures are only 0.5% for the 800+ group and 3% for the 750-799 group. It is clear that, in conjunction with starting a credit file early, paying on time is a key trait of the FICO® Score high achiever.</li> <li><strong>Balance and utilization.</strong> Finally, we look at how credit is being used, focusing on revolving product use. (Since most people only have one mortgage or one auto loan, variation in instalment product figures is minimal and driven by payment history, which is near perfect for high scorers, as we’ve seen.) FICO® Score high achievers tend to have more open revolving accounts. While the % active trades and utilization are generally lower, by no means do high scorers avoid the use of credit products. What drives the difference here is the amount of <u>available</u> revolving credit utilized. The 800+ group is roughly 1/4 of the national median, both in total and on their highest utilized card; they also have lower balances and more cards<em>. </em>The 750-799 group is more active and higher utilized, but still only at 2/3 of the national figures. The young 750-799 group compensate with lower revolving balances and, as a result, lower utilization, which is in line with what we see for the 800+ group.</li> <li><strong>Benchmarks.</strong> I’d like to point out that while this study provides good benchmarks of the typical credit traits of the FICO® Score high achiever, individual credit profiles will vary widely. And keep in mind that when we sort groups of consumers as a whole by different behaviours, some results may look superficially odd. For example, the 800+ band has a longer median average open account time (128 months) than average revolving months on file (140 months).</li> </ul> So, what do we conclude? A huge takeaway is that high scorers don’t have too much in the way of serious delinquencies and negative public record data.</p> <p>In most respects, the young 800+ people are like their peer group. They really only differ markedly in their shorter credit history and higher non-mortgage balance, both of which are a function of life stage. Our results show that you don’t have to be a credit product hermit; these high scorers have more credit cards. The takeaway is to start credit activity early and maintain well-managed and moderate usage.</p> <p>In many ways, the young 750-799 people are more interesting because their age profile is much younger. Their credit characteristics differ more from their peer group, particularly in terms of length of credit history. They compensate by having almost pristine credit records and lower balances.</p> <p>Ultimately, 39% of US consumers are FICO® Score high achievers, which they accomplish by following common-sense credit practices. It ain’t rocket science!</p>
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