FICO Partners with Open Banking Leader OpenWrks to Deliver Affordability Assessments

LONDON, 29 May 2020

Highlights

• FICO has partnered with OpenWrks in the UK to improve affordability assessments for existing customer management and collections activities
• Combining Open Banking data with conversational AI enables consumers to self- serve by completing an affordability assessment digitally and remotely, dramatically reducing operational costs and improving customer experience
• FICO and OpenWrks plan to develop and deploy a new suite of analytics to unlock the value in Open Banking data to improve consumer and business lending decisions

Global analytics and decision management provider FICO has partnered with OpenWrks – a leading provider of Open Banking based digital engagement applications. Under the partnership, which initially serves the UK market, FICO plans to combine OpenWrks financial budgeting and conversational AI technology with FICO’s market-leading integrated collections and omni-channel platform to assist creditors in making the most appropriate customer decisions during the crisis and beyond.

Open Banking has created transparency about how customers manage their finances. Being able to access this transparency in a user-friendly way is expected to revolutionise the speed and accuracy of up to 200 million affordability assessments undertaken annually before credit terms are offered. Increasing speed and accuracy will not only save money but also improve the overall customer experience.

Traditionally, affordability assessments for customers in collections are time-consuming, taking on average 45 minutes to complete; expensive, at between £15-£20 per assessment; and can have a significant margin of error, on average up to £3,600. This means the decisions creditors are making are sub-optimal and at risk of creating further customer detriment.

OpenWrks’ MyBudget application combines Open Banking data with conversational AI to enable consumers to complete self-service income and expenditure assessments online. Seamless integration into the FICO® Debt Manager™ platform gives an accurate assessment about customer affordability, complete with payment and schedule options in under five minutes. 

Neil Cunningham, senior partner, UKI FS & Nordics, FICO, said, "We have a rich heritage in transaction data analytics, so we're excited about the complementary blend of capabilities and innovation this partnership will deliver. Having completed a strategic assessment of the market, OpenWrks is the clear market leader in delivering engaging consumer-facing applications and have an impressive record of innovation and scaling their Open Banking services, managing over 500.000 customers and 100 million API calls per month."

While the partnership covers the full credit lifecycle, the initial focus is on the integration of OpenWrks technology with FICO's market-leading collections and omni-channel platforms." We are providing market-leading capabilities in collections - a very real ask from the market right now," said Cunningham.

Steve Bradford, co-founder & chief commercial officer at OpenWrks, said, "Our MyBudget application uses a blend of Open Banking and user-contributed data to deliver a more accurate, holistic picture of someone's finances. Using affordability metrics as part of customer management and collections strategies is not only a compliance exercise but also a way of engaging and building trust with customers."

FICO is a global leader in both unlocking the value in data and crucially in operationalising decisions and so they are an ideal partner for us as we roll out our solutions both in the UK and Europe.”

About FICO
FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956 and based in Silicon Valley, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 100 countries do everything from protecting 2,6 billion payment cards from fraud, to helping people get credit, to ensuring that millions of airplanes and rental cars are in the right place at the right time.

Learn more at https://www.fico.com

FICO and Debt Manager are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fair Isaac Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

About OpenWrks
OpenWrks builds the technology that makes Open Banking work. OpenWrks applications make it easy for people to access their account information and securely share it with businesses they trust, so those businesses can deliver better, more personalised products and services. With connectivity to over 3.000 Banks, OpenWrks has built a suite of applications for businesses to help their customers better manage their money including the market leading MyBudget affordability application.

Learn more at https://www.openwrks.com

Contacts:
FICO UK PR Team
Wendy Harrison/Parm Heer/Matthew Enderby
ficoteam@harrisonsadler.com
0208 977 9132

Julie Urquhart
Senior Manager, Corporate Communications
FICO
T +44 (0) 7737 612526
julieurquhart@fico.com
www.fico.com