AI Helps Auto-Loan Company Handle Industry's Trickiest Turn

A growing number of lenders are using artificial intelligence to digest growing volumes of data and find relationships between variables to determine creditworthiness. Last year, subprime auto lender Prestige Financial Services started working with artificial intelligence (AI) software developer ZestFinance to analyze about 2,700 borrower characteristics, instead of the several dozen the lender had on its risk-assessment scorecard. Draper, UT-based Prestige is among a growing number of lenders that view AI as a tool that can digest increasing volumes of data and find relationships between variables to determine creditworthiness. Prestige and ZestFinance developed a machine learning system that allowed Prestige to consider factors such as when a bankruptcy happened, previous car-payment records, and time spent living at a current residence. Said ZestFinance's Douglas Merrill, "If you're building an AI model, you can have hundreds or thousands" of such indicators, including whether people have defaulted on rent payments or cellphone bills.