FICO, Equifax To Sell Consumer Data To Banks

FICO and Equifax announced Wednesday (March 27) the launch of the Data Decisions Cloud, a data and analytics suite of products.

In a press release, the two companies said the Data Decisions Cloud targets the needs of companies across risk, marketing and fraud, which in turn enables financial firms to meet customers’ needs faster and more accurately.

“We are energized about this broad partnership between Equifax and FICO. Two industry leaders are joining forces to help financial institutions better meet the needs of consumers and improve business agility,” said Mark W. Begor, CEO of Equifax. “Our partnership will seamlessly integrate Equifax’s differentiated data assets and Ignite platform with FICO’s market-leading, cloud-based decisioning software and applications.”

According to FICO and Equifax, the Data Decisions Cloud integrates Equifax’s data and analytics management platform with the FICO Analytic Cloud and its digital decisioning platform. This strategic alignment aims to enable companies to tap more insights from the data they are amassing. Companies will be able to create predictive models and rapidly deploy decisions into production. Equifax and FICO said financial firms will benefit from an increase in the pace of innovation in data and decisioning.

“Our common mission is to empower financial institutions to leverage data-driven decisioning in all their customer interactions,” said William J. Lansing, CEO of FICO, in the same press release. “With this strategic partnership, FICO and Equifax will help organizations operationalize the best data with unparalleled predictive analytics and applied AI, and do so in a streamlined and cost-effective way.”

Equifax and FICO said they are planning to release three pre-built solutions during 2019, including a connected system to provide real-time access to raw and trended data; a compliance-as-a-service solution and an integrated, pre-screen marketing automation solution.

“Currently, there is a deluge of data, and while we have processes to extract meaningful insights to make it actionable, it is a cumbersome and time-consuming process,” said Liza A. Yannon, director of quantitative analysis at Key Bank.