Leading UK bank used FICO optimisation tools to grant more credit with highly tailored decision strategies

LONDON, April 10, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HSBC UK and global analytics software leader FICO have won a prestigious FStech Award for Best Use of Data Analytics. The award, presented in a gala event in London, recognises HSBC UK’s use of AI-powered optimisation tools from FICO to design and deploy highly tailored credit line offers to customers. The project resulted in HSBC UK being able to better meet their customers’ needs through access to additional products, with no increase in credit losses.

More information: https://www.fstech.co.uk/awards/winners25.php

"Our focus is primarily how we can support our customers and improve their overall experience with us. The implementation of this new technology is a great example of our people-centric approach, as we consistently look for opportunities to be more effective for our customers," said Michael Roberts, head of Unsecured Retail Risk, HSBC UK. "Whilst our existing system was sophisticated, this upgrade has allowed us to align our customer needs, growth plans and our responsible lending criteria, to better meet the needs of those who bank with us."

HSBC UK worked closely with FICO to design the decision influence process, allowing them to identify customers who would benefit from a credit increase offering. Using the FICO software, HSBC UK’s team could state specific goals and constraints, and receive an optimised decision strategy tree for deployment into the bank’s risk decision engine, and as such make customer-centric decisions more streamlined. This included creation of eight action-effect models to forecast the impact of the existing credit line increase strategy on expected spend, balance build, revenue, and loss, as well as how this changes according to different increase amounts, and how this has a tangible benefit for the bank’s customers.

"HSBC UK's accelerated learning approach has translated into tangible financial benefits for customers and the bank," said Nikhil Behl, president of Software at FICO. "The ability to continually optimise and further accelerate gives HSBC UK a clear market edge and demonstrates the power of FICO optimisation to improve business outcomes from complex decision strategies."

FICO^® Decision Optimiser is part of FICO^® Platform, and gives organisations access to the most comprehensive enterprise optimisation capability in the market today. It enables multiple stakeholders across data science, operations research, business staff, and IT to collaborate and rapidly create, validate, and launch optimisation solutions. Millions of variables can be processed at great speed and scalability, enabling business users to make better decisions for complex problems with competing objectives in minutes. FICO Platform is a next-generation, applied intelligence platform to power customer connections.

Now in its 25th year, the FStech Awards recognise and celebrate companies which have demonstrated excellence and innovation within the UK and EMEA financial services sector.

About HSBC UK

HSBC UK serves over 15 million active customers across the UK, supported by 23,900 colleagues. HSBC UK offers a complete range of retail banking and wealth management to personal and private banking customers, as well as commercial banking for small to medium businesses and large corporates. HSBC UK is a ring-fenced bank and wholly-owned subsidiary of HSBC Holdings plc.

HSBC Holdings plc, the parent company of HSBC, is headquartered in London. HSBC serves customers worldwide from offices in 58 countries and territories. With assets of US$3,017bn at 31 December 2024, HSBC is one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations.

About FICO

FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 80 countries do everything from protecting 4 billion payment cards from fraud, to improving financial inclusion, to increasing supply chain resiliency. The FICO® Score, used by 90% of top US lenders, is the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the US and has been made available in over 40 other countries, improving risk management, credit access and transparency. Learn more at www.fico.com.

FICO is a registered trademark of Fair Isaac Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.

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Contacts

For further press information please contact:
FICO UK PR Team
Wendy Harrison/Parm Heer
ficoteam@harrisonsadler.com
0208 977 9132