Turkey’s Akbank Will Use FICO Optimization to Build Value in Credit Card Portfolio

Akbank’s teams will also use FICO’s advanced decision optimization capabilities on a range of business problems

Highlights

• After a competitive search, Akbank chose FICO to optimize its consumer credit card limit decisions for new and existing customers.
• Akbank also plans to use the same optimization technologies in solving different problems such as setting loan amount and price, and customer credit limits
• FICO is also working to futureproof the bank’s risk management growth by training in-house Akbank team on the optimization methodologies and action-effect modelling.
• Akbank’s strategy is to establish an optimization centre of excellence.

Global analytics and decision management provider FICO is providing decision optimization software to manage the growing consumer credit card portfolio for one of the biggest Turkish retail banks, Akbank.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-decision-optimizer

FICO has a global pedigree in credit limit management optimization projects, and many of the world’s leading financial institutions use its optimization technology. Akbank will tap into this depth of experience to create an optimization centre of excellence. Akbank has tasked FICO to train an in-house team so they can build their own applications for other areas,  such as loan amount and pricing optimization, customer-based limit optimization and restructuring optimization.

FICO will configure and develop sophisticated “action-effect” models for Akbank’s retail lending team using FICO® Decision Optimizer to manage their initial credit limit assignment and the on-going limits for Akbank’s consumer credit card portfolio.  The action-effect models project customer responses to offers in order to determine the best offer for each customer.  These will be configured into the optimization framework, allowing the Akbank team to choose an operating point that meets their objectives and constraints.

Serhan Pak, Akbank’s senior vice president, Retail Lending, said: “We view optimization as a strategic tool for Akbank, as we build on excellence in credit analytics to reach our strategic goals. The robustness of FICO’s analytic technology and the fact that their optimization applications are in use worldwide made them a natural choice for us.”

Emre Unlusoy, regional director for Turkey & Balkans at FICO, said: “Akbank is aiming to improve profitability, market share and revenues while decreasing non-performing loans. This is an ideal use of optimization, which brings together analytics, decision logic, mathematical optimization and domain expertise.”

FICO® Decision Optimizer enables business analysts to develop, assess and improve the decisions that drive customer interactions and business results. Users can test decision strategies for the optimal results that balance trade-offs between cost, risk and reward, by factoring in dynamic economic and market conditions.

Akbank’s mission is to be the leading bank that drives Turkey into the future. The bank has grown to over 750 branches and employs more than 12,000 people.