LONDON, Nov. 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Lending Stream, a top short-term lender in the UK, has built a state-of-the-art credit platform using the FICO^® Decision Management Suite
• The FICO system allows Lending Stream to introduce new rules and models faster, comply with lending regulations and grow their business
• The FICO^® Decision Management Suite is an integrated platform of tools for building high-performance decision management applications

Analytic software firm FICO announced today that UK short-term lender Lending Stream has built its credit system using the FICO^® Decision Management Suite, a platform for developing decision management applications. Lending Stream uses the system during the credit origination process to match credit terms with each applicant's specific risk and repayment ability.

More information: http://www.fico.com/en/analytics/decision-management-suite

"Analytics is in our DNA — we started as an analytics company and turned that expertise into becoming a leader in the alternative lending market," said Nallan Suresh, vice president for risk and analytics at Lending Stream. "We built our own underwriting engine, but we needed to move to a new platform that would allow us to scale our business quickly. We have a very strong IT team, and we could have built it ourselves, but FICO has built into its solution the best practices that come from decades of experience in building decision engines."

When Lending Stream surveyed the market, they chose FICO^® Blaze Advisor^® decision management system, part of the FICO Decision Management Suite.

"FICO Blaze Advisor offered us three things that others didn't," Suresh said. "First, we wanted a platform that would integrate very easily with our system, and allow people on our risk team to introduce new rules without going through a whole release process with our engineering team. That adds a lot of efficiency. Second, we wanted strong versioning, which is particularly important when working with both regulated businesses and large-scale portfolios. With the FICO system, we can go back and check the rules in place at any time, for any decision. Third, we wanted an engine that could help us scale rapidly, and this puts us miles ahead in the market – in online lending, it's all about the agility of the platform. With FICO Blaze Advisor, these features are time-tested."

Alternative lending is a highly competitive market in the UK. Lending Stream is using the FICO system to hone its offers.

"It's hard to underwrite loans in our space because so many customers have thin credit records, or blemished credit records, so we need really good underwriting," said Suresh. "Fortunately, we have one of the strongest analytics and underwriting teams in the industry. Everything we do is data-driven, so it's important to be able to introduce new scoring models into our system quickly. The FICO system will really cut down on the model deployment time — that's critical to being competitive in this space."

"For alternative lenders, it's absolutely critical to get an applicant's risk right, and to be able to change offers quickly as the market changes," said Steve Hadaway, general manager for FICO in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "Lending Stream are taking an extremely advanced and dynamic approach to lending. Their team is excellent, and our software enables them to grow and change at their own pace."

The FICO^® Decision Management Suite 2.0 provides an easy way for customers to evaluate, customize, deploy and scale state-of-the-art analytics and decision management solutions. It allows customers to quickly integrate FICO and FICO partner decision management tools and components with their own components, helping organizations of all sizes realize the promise of advanced analytics and decision management via cost-effective, scalable cloud and on-premises solutions.

About Lending Stream
Lending Stream is a trusted payday loan alternative, providing short-term loans since 2008. New customers can apply for anywhere from £50 to £800, and returning customers can apply for up to £1500. Lending Stream is a licensed lender authorized and supervised by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

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 170 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 www.fico.com.

Join the conversation at https://twitter.com/fico & http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/

FICO and Blaze Advisor are registered trademarks of Fair Isaac Corporation in the US and other countries.

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SOURCE FICO

Media: Georgia Hart for FICO, Catalysis, +44 (0)20 7759 2011, fico@catalysis.co.uk; Investors/Analysts: Steven Weber, FICO, +1 800-213-5542, investor@fico.com