Increasing Approvals Without Adding Risk at Altra Federal Credit Union

By Zest AI
February 2022

Altra FCU was in the process of building a new digital lending platform and was looking to automate more of its auto lending decisions, reducing the amount of human interaction from application to approval. Other key goals were to give members better service and say yes more often without adding risk. Working with Zest, Altra built a new AI-based underwriting model, trained and validated on 50 months of prior loans. The team parsed thousands of raw bureau variables to select nearly 150 that predict delinquencies with far higher accuracy in a fully automated decisioning process. The results were impressive, 22% increase in approvals with no added risk and a fourfold increase in its auto-decision rate. "Our vision is to help our members live their best lives. Zest AI will help us live up to our vision, allowing us to serve more members by streamlining their experience in obtaining an auto loan. We want to make their loan process easier to get them into a new car they love!" - Mark Tierney, VP Consumer Lending, Altra Federal Credit Union

About Zest AI

Zest AI is a mission-driven software company that helps credit unions and banks answer their most important question: Who do I lend to? Zest’s Model Management System lets lenders break the limitations of traditional credit scores to identify good borrowers overlooked by legacy techniques.

Zest has been on a mission to make fair and transparent credit available to all since 2009 and are pioneers in the safe use of AI in credit underwriting.