Stephanie Covert, the Executive Vice President of Software at FICO, recently shared insights about FICO’s transition to an AI-enabled platform and her leadership role in a unique women’s leadership program. FICO, a global analytics software company, has been a pioneer in the credit-scoring industry since 1956.
Covert discussed FICO’s shift towards an AI-enabled platform, emphasizing the changing landscape of customer expectations. With a focus on delivering personalized and value-added experiences, FICO aims to provide a holistic view of customers for better decision-making. The platform transformation involves unifying decades of innovation into a single SaaS platform, enabling customers to quickly build new services and solutions to enhance customer interactions.
Regarding the development of the AI platform, Covert mentioned a combination of leveraging open-source capabilities and FICO-specific intellectual property. FICO’s platform is currently used by over 100 top Tier 1 banks globally.
The platform’s popular functionalities include driving analytics-enhanced decisioning, helping customers make smarter and faster decisions in various areas such as card originations and customer management. While FICO doesn’t currently use generative AI, it offers the capability for customers to use it responsibly and auditably.
Covert highlighted the challenges faced by banking clients in deploying AI, particularly in moving from development to production. FICO assists customers in overcoming these challenges by providing tools for data management, AI model execution, monitoring, and reporting.
Addressing the use of alternative data in credit decisioning, Covert emphasized the importance of leveraging additional data with a focus on fairness, unbiased results, and ethical considerations. FICO innovates on credit scores by incorporating customer permission data and open banking data.
Covert also shared her passion for FICO’s women’s leadership program, which focuses on developing authentic leadership skills among women. The program has seen success with over 70% of participants expanding their responsibilities and 30% receiving promotions.
On the topic of gender diversity in tech, Covert identified a lack of diversity in leadership roles as a key challenge. She emphasized the need for more mentorship roles for women, creating supportive and unbiased work environments, and teaching women leadership skills and self-awareness to foster their success.
Overall, Covert’s insights provide a comprehensive view of FICO’s AI platform, its applications in the financial industry, and the importance of leadership development and gender diversity in the tech sector.
