Using Mobile Technology to Improve Customer Interactions

Even lenders with the best analytics and decision management platforms often struggle to communicate advice and offers to customers. Wouldn't it be great if they could do so via a low-cost channel that their customers actually enjoy using, and thus is likely to yield more and higher-quality responses? Together with...

How-To Guide for Knowledge Automation in the Era of Big Data

FICO’s own Alan Fish has just published Knowledge Automation (Wiley). The book provides a how-to guide for improving business processes by automating business knowledge, which includes not just human knowledge but “artificial” knowledge extracted from data using analytics. Knowledge Automation: How to Implement Decision Management in Business Processes describes a...

Four out of five European bankers see another recession coming

The latest European Credit Risk Outlook, published by FICO and Efma today, provides a grim forecast for Europe. More than 100 credit risk management professionals across Europe answered the survey in January and February, and here’s some of what they said: 79 percent of respondents forecast a new European recession...

New Defense Fights Bank Robbery

BankInfoSecurity has published an article and podcast that feature FBI Special Agent Erik Vasys discussing work with FICO on Bandit Shield, their new anti-bank robbery initiative. Here's an excerpt from the article: Bank robberies are old-world crimes, but they are still devastating to institutions and their communities. How is the...

Don’t forget about low-tech fraud

In today’s fast-paced world of electronic crime and scams, we often focus on large-scale card fraud attacks, perpetrated by criminals who employ sophisticated technology to steal large amounts of personal and financial data. These thieves are highly proficient at exploiting technology that allows them to reap sizeable financial rewards while...

Making the most of score differences

I previously blogged about how a consumer’s FICO® Score may vary from one CRA to another, due mostly to differences in data reported to each of the credit reporting agencies. This begs the question: when pulling scores from more than one CRA, which should be used for credit decisioning? The...

Fraud vs. Customer Impact—A Tricky Balancing Act

I recently returned from giving the keynote address at the 2012 Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference. The event draws crypto/data security/privacy experts, researchers, and practitioners across the world to focus on the latest advances in this space. During this week-long deep technical conference, a central theme was how to...

Cybercops & robbers: Digital posses to bust bank bandits

FoxNews.com has covered recent news on joint anti-crime efforts between FICO and the FBI Bandit Shield program, quoting FICO fraud blogger John Buzzard. Here's an excerpt: Bank robbers lost their cool when six-guns went out of style, but they’re still just as dangerous: In 2010 alone, 90 people were taken...

Web Banking Fraud Actually in Decline

American Banker recently published an article on the decline in internet banking fraud losses and the emerging threat of first-party fraud. FICO fraud experts, including fraud blogger Brian Kinch, are quoted. Here's an excerpt: Most of the recent attention in fraud technology has been on third-party fraud. The most common...

Consumer spending rises on UK cards

In today’s environment, even moderately good economic news needs to be celebrated. FICO just released card performance data from December 2011 that shows average sales per UK-issued card rose to a two-year high of just over £600. As reported in our news release, average card sales in December 2011 were...

Cutting capital requirements would increase lending

The Banker just published some interesting research on how lower bank capital requirements could boost the economy. Their numbers suggest that cutting capital requirement by just 1% would dramatically increase lending power, enabling the UK to increase bank assets by an amount equal to about 37% of GDP — for...

Partnering with the FBI to fight fraud

Exciting news on the fraud front—we’ve just joined forces with the FBI on new anti-crime efforts. FICO’s online fraud forum http://www.fraudalertnetwork.com/ will soon host an FBI discussion area on subjects like current bank robbery investigations and electronic financial crimes. These discussions tie into the FBI's Bandit Shield program, which brings...

Enterprise fraud: It's all about relationships

Remember the shock of hearing Darth Vader tell Luke Skywalker, “I am your father”? That’s pretty much the worst-case scenario for a family meeting. Many people have a similar shock when they discover that they need to tell their own bank about their relationships with it. Like Luke, the bank...

Russians' credit health is strengthening

Much of the focus on the Russian election this week has put a spotlight on how far the country has come since perestroika and the end of the Cold War. Yesterday FICO released our own analysis on an interesting part of the country’s picture: the credit health of Russian consumers....

Finding the levers to change customer behavior

Forward-looking economic calibrations of risk, such as those I described in my last post, are being folded into a wide range of customer decision strategies. Samsung Card, one of Korea's largest credit card companies, is at the forefront of this trend. We recently worked with Samsung Card to improve portfolio...