Watch the FICO World Fairness in Lending Session

During FICO World this year, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion focused on a core and timely topic: fairness in lending

Our panel was comprised of leading practitioners in the fair lending space spanning academia, policy, and financial services:

“Fairness in lending means not penalizing people for circumstances that are outside of their control such as a lack of intergenerational wealth, or historical discrimination, racism.”

- Vanessa Perry

During our Fairness in Lending session, we covered the developments in the expansion of inclusive lending as well as key opportunities that abound in fairness in risk modeling and lending strategies.

Topics included:

• Defining fairness in lending
• Analytic considerations concerning credit risk assessment and the enhancement of responsible lending.
• Opportunities to augment the use of credit scoring to drive increased financial inclusion.
• The future of responsible lending within the credit ecosystem

“When I step back and think about the long arc of fair lending, fairness and inclusivity, I’m struck by the massive impact, positive impact, that credit scoring has had on fairness and inclusion.”

- Arthur Baines

“Responsible credit is critical. You do not want to overextend credit in the name of inclusion. We need to keep a lens on how we expand credit access, responsibly.”

- Zeenat Sidi

I am grateful to our panelists for participating in this session to help us advance this important dialogue around financial inclusion and fairness in credit scoring. This thoughtful discussion provides abundant perspectives that I find to be enlightening and I hope that you agree.

- Ethan

View the full video from the FICO World Fair Lending panel here: fairness in lending 

Fairness in Lending Panel Bios

Vanessa Perry

Vanessa Gail Perry is a professor and vice dean for strategy at the George Washington University School of Business. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center. Her research is focused on consumers in housing and financial markets, marketplace discrimination, and public policy interventions, and has been published extensively in academic and practitioner-oriented outlets. Her recent work includes the award-winning article and documentary film “Dog Parks and Coffee Shops: Faux-Diversity and Consumption in Gentrifying Neighborhoods,” coauthored with Professor Sonya Grier and research on the effects of digitalization and racial equity in housing markets. 

Professor Perry previously served as a senior advisor to the Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and as an expert at the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She also served for several years as a senior economist at Freddie Mac and has been a consultant to numerous public and private sector clients, including the Federal Housing Administration, the Small Business Administration, Bank of America, the National Association of Realtors, and FICO. Perry has a BA from the American University, an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis, and a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Arthur Baines

Arthur Baines is a Vice President and former Practice Leader of Charles River Associates Financial Economics practice, and has more than 30 years of diversified business, economic, and quantitative analysis experience. He is a leading expert in the regulatory analytics of consumer finance and banking products and the retail automotive industry and has testified on related issues.

Arthur has assisted numerous financial institutions and lenders design and implement quantitative fair lending monitoring programs, including the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques. Additionally, he has worked with legal counsel for financial institutions, captive finance companies and manufacturers facing potential enforcement actions by the DOJ, CFPB and FTC alleging violations of ECOA, FHA, CRA, SCRA, FCRA, UDAAP and other consumer finance regulations.

Zeenat Sidi

Zeenat Sidi is President and COO of mello®, where she leads the development of loan Depot, Inc.’s mortgage-adjacent digital-first products and services that complement the company’s core mortgage and servicing operations platform. Zeenat has 25 years of experience in P&L leadership, digital transformation, risk management, operations, and strategy at several well knownfinancial institutions in the US and Canada.

Zeenat joined loanDepot in 2022 from Mission Lane where she was Business Head of Digital Banking and Financial Services charged with leading the development of various product offerings to augment credit cards. Prior to this role, Zeenat served as GM of Enterprise Lending, Investing and Data at Galileo Financial Technologies (a SoFi company), where she spearheaded a major strategic transformation that converted Galileo from a powerful payment processing platform to a company that offers a full suite of financial services products through a modern API-based payments platform. Previously, Zeenat was the EVP and Group Business Head of SoFi’s lending businesses, comprised of student loans, personal unsecured loans, and home loans – a digitally-powered business that she built and scaled from the ground up, to a record and industry-leading profitability profile further enhancing her deep FinTech expertise.

Prior to SoFi, Zeenat served as GM of the Home Equity business at Capital One after being the COO of the Home Loans business. During this time, she developed the strategy  that moved the Home Loans business into the top quartile for customer experience in the industry, while ensuring positive unit economics through automation and process reengineering. She also brings diverse experience with RBC, including as the GM of the Personal Unsecured, Auto and Student Lending businesses during the financial crisis, leading a 2,500-person Risk Operations team, and overseeing Portfolio Management and Credit Strategy for the largest consumer loan, credit card and small business financing portfolios in Canada. She began her career in credit modeling and strategy consulting with Experian and FICO.

Zeenat holds an MBA with Fuqua Scholar Distinction from Duke University, a Master of Science in Operations Research from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science in Systems Analysis from the University of Miami. She serves as the Chair of the Audit Committee of the Board for the Texas Women’s Foundation, the largest regional non-profit women’s fund in the country committed to advancing positive social and economic change for women and girls.