ZestFinance Makes Machine Learning Tools Available Via Microsoft Cloud Auto Finance News

Lenders using ZestFinance Inc.'s technology can now use Microsoft's cloud-based Azure platform rather than their own servers to analyze machine learning models. "Testing and training machine learning models is a very compute-intensive task," said ZestFinance founder and Chief Executive Doug Merrill. "Being able to tap Microsoft's Azure cloud allows customers using Zest tools to train machine learning models in a matter of hours, so they can work quickly, rather than waiting for computing time to free up on servers that a bank might have in its data center, which could take days." It holds the potential for financial institutions to ultimately provide more credit at a lower cost across their entire credit portfolios, he added. Financial institutions can use machine learning to extend credit to people who, based on traditional underwriting standards, would not qualify for it.