Shawn Budde contrasts ZestFinance's rapid model deployment capabilities with traditional banking deployment cycles during a 2013 panel.
Disclosure
The CFPB approached ZestFinance offering regulatory protection for algorithmic underwriting
“We've, ah, we've actually been approached by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, ah, about, in essence, giving us kind of a waiver to say that, you know, we're gonna protect you from regulators who dispute this or don't like it.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
ZestFinance saw fraud drop 98% overnight after launching new model
“When we implemented in December, we saw fraud drop overnight by about 98% and we saw first payment failures drop by more than 40% you know, between December first and December second when we implemented the model.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Budde: Major lenders are not assembling advanced ML models for credit decisions
“Nobody is taking an SVM, ah, naive Bayesian, you know, A hidden mark off a random forest, and assembling those into a credit decision, as far as I know. We haven't come across them. I've talked to some of the biggest lenders.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Budde: ZestFinance does not scrape Facebook data for credit decisions
“Everybody kind of, everybody first off assumes that we're scraping Facebook. We're not.”
Insight
Budde: Top credit variables hold 3-5% weight in ZestFinance models
“The data that has the most impact Is the same data that has always had the most impact. It's just instead of being 10 or 15 or 20% of the equation, it's, you know, it's three to five percent of the equation.”
Disclosure
Budde: ZestFinance operates as a direct lender, not a software vendor
“We're a lender. So we're, you know, we're not in the business, ah, primarily in the business of selling models or techniques. We're not a consulting company. We are actually making loans, you know, on our own portfolio, and that's where we believe the money is…”