FICO Blaze Advisor 7 Brings Breakthrough Visualization Capabilities to Asia Pacific for Better Business Decisions

SINGAPORE—January 11, 2012—FICO (NYSE:FICO), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today announced the general availability of FICO^® Blaze Advisor^® business rules management system version 7 in the Asia-Pacific region. With groundbreaking new visualization capabilities, the new release will enable organizations to more rapidly develop and deploy rules-based decision services that dramatically improve business agility and financial performance.

FICO's industry-leading business rules management technology has already made deep inroads throughout the region, with successful installations in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea, China, Australia and New Zealand. Blaze Advisor is primarily used by organizations in the financial services, insurance, telecommunications, government, and health care sectors.

Banks in emerging consumer credit markets, like the Philippines, are engaging FICO for help in building up their credit risk infrastructure. "Consumer banking is a new market for us, and we wanted to enter it in the strongest possible position," said Leah Castañeda, Vice President and Consumer Lending Division Head, Bank of Commerce. "With FICO's technology and strategy consulting expertise, we have a powerful and reliable underwriting solution to helps us mitigate the risks inherent in this venture, as well as a strong differentiator against our competition."

A key differentiator in Blaze Advisor 7 is the innovative Decision Graph visual metaphor, a decision tree management solution that makes even the most complex rule sets easier to manage and explain. The new capability is especially valuable to businesses that need to be able to explain their decision logic to external auditors and regulators, or to internal parties such as senior management.
Decision Graph gives business analysts a more intuitive way to view and navigate decision trees, which can reach 10.000 nodes or more. FICO's patented technology includes sophisticated algorithms that help users to visually simplify trees by eliminating duplication of nodes.

Users can also make updates more quickly and safely by focusing on just that part of the tree that is relevant for the task at hand. Strategies can be further improved through dynamic analysis to assess the impact of changes by seeing how sample data flows through the logic of the tree - for example, to see the profitability of customers passing through a particular branch of a decision tree. The result is a powerful and user-friendly tool that reduces errors by removing complexity, and delivers strategy improvements that contribute directly to the bottom line.

"Business rules management provides a shared platform for CIOs and business managers to help their enterprises stay competitive, and making business logic clearer to all parties is an essential part of that collaboration," said Jim Sinur, a vice president at Gartner Research specializing in business rules management systems. "Better visualization of business logic can provide a huge uplift for companies that are looking for ways to improve business decisions."

"Organizations in Asia, especially in financial services, recognize the value of BRMS technology, particularly when they're coming under increased scrutiny from external auditors and regulators," said Dan McConaghy, president, FICO Asia Pacific. "The new Decision Graph innovation will help business analysts manage and explain even the most complex rules and decisions to these important external stakeholders, as well as their company's senior management."

For rule developers, version 7 makes the FICO^® Blaze Advisor^® for Java integrated development environment (IDE) available as an Eclipse plug-in, which can accelerate project development in a familiar, industry-standard environment. The latest release also enhances the system’s web-based rules maintenance application to give business experts an even more user-friendly environment for managing their own rules.

As part of FICO’s suite of decision management tools, FICO Blaze Advisor integrates seamlessly with FICO^® Model Builder, providing the industry’s only solution for creating decision services that manage rules, models and related logic in a shared repository, which can be accessed by a business user using a common IDE. The integration across the FICO tools suite enables organizations to apply predictive analytics more effectively and deploy decision services more quickly.

Über FICO
FICO (NYSE:FICO) delivers superior predictive analytics solutions that drive smarter decisions. The company’s groundbreaking use of mathematics to predict consumer behavior has transformed entire industries and revolutionized the way risk is managed and products are marketed. FICO’s innovative solutions include the FICO^® Score — the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the United States — along with industry-leading solutions for managing credit accounts, identifying and minimizing the impact of fraud, and customizing consumer offers with pinpoint accuracy. Most of the world’s top banks, as well as leading insurers, retailers, pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, rely on FICO solutions to accelerate growth, control risk, boost profits and meet regulatory and competitive demands. FICO also helps millions of individuals manage their personal credit health through www.myFICO.com.

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Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Information
Except for historical information contained herein, the statements contained in this news release that relate to FICO or its business are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially, including the success of the Company's Decision Management strategy and reengineering plan, the maintenance of its existing relationships and ability to create new relationships with customers and key alliance partners, its ability to continue to develop new and enhanced products and services, its ability to recruit and retain key technical and managerial personnel, competition, regulatory changes applicable to the use of consumer credit and other data, the failure to realize the anticipated benefits of any acquisitions, continuing material adverse developments in global economic conditions, and other risks described from time to time in FICO's SEC reports, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2011. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes, FICO's results could differ materially from its expectations. FICO disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

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