South African Banks And Retailers Advancing Credit Strategies With Optimization Analytics From FICO

LONDON, Feb. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- FICO (NYSE:FICO), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, today announced that South African credit grantors are increasingly adopting decision modeling and optimization analytics to improve their credit strategies. In the past few months, FICO has signed three new clients – all leading retailers and banks – to its list of South African clients using the most advanced analytics to develop strategies that outperform the market.

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"Retailers here compete fiercely for customers and their loyalty," said Jim Slavik, chief executive of Credit and Financial Services at Edcon, South Africa's largest retail group. "At Edcon we use the most powerful analytics to improve the performance of our strategies and give our customers the credit they need. We regard FICO as an analytic partner, and their tools for decision modeling and optimization as the gold standard."

"Nedbank's goal is to be 'World Class at Managing Risk,' " said Gavin Payne, chief risk officer for Nedbank Retail, part of Nedbank Group, South Africa's fourth-largest banking group, and the winner of The Banker's 2011 award for best bank in South Africa. "Decision modeling and optimization services from FICO take us beyond standard uses of predictive analytics, giving us a better way to make credit decisions in a demanding regulatory environment with tough competition."

Decision modeling and optimization are analytic technologies used to develop superior decision strategies. Decision modeling creates a "map" of the relationships between all variables of a decision — the data inputs, decision, results and constraints. Optimization software uses the decision model to design decision strategies that determine the ideal offer for every customer, in order to maximize profit while satisfying constraints such as regulatory requirements.