If you think smart world-class companies don't face challenges when using machine learning to automate credit decisions, just ask Apple and Goldman Sachs. Based on a flurry of angry tweets and high-profile accusations, the New York Department of Financial Services launched an investigation into potential gender discrimination by algorithms that evaluate Apple Card applicants. Whether real or perceived, gender bias can damage the reputation of tech darlings like Apple, even if their credit decisioning process is wholly managed by someone else -- in this case, Goldman. It doesn't help when one of the accusers is a former Apple co-founder. Enova Decisions understands how to build accurate credit models -- without bias.

Senior executives across various industries are increasing their investments in data and analytics in an effort to improve decision making through artificial intelligence (AI). However, according to a 2019 report by the International Institute for Analytics, few companies "have truly deployed AI at enterprise scale." In order to better understand what's preventing the midmarket from getting AI investments off the ground, Enova Decisions sponsored Harvard Review Analytic Services to survey over 300 senior executives. This report identifies what use cases may benefit most from artificial intelligence, examines the technical and cultural challenges preventing businesses from fully capitalizing on AI investments, and provides best practices to implementing AI into business applications.

How they describe themselves: Actionable analytics is the backbone of NYSE-listed Enova International, a global online lending company. In the past 14 years, the analytics team has applied predictive and prescriptive analytics to fraud detection, credit risk management, and customer retention and built the Colossus Digital Decisioning Platform to automate and optimize many of Enova's operational decisions. As a result, Enova has extended over $20 billion in credit to over 5 million customers worldwide. Enova Decisions was launched in 2016 to help businesses in financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, and higher education achieve similar outcomes by leveraging the same analytics expertise and decisioning technology. How they describe their product/innovation: Enova Decisions Cloud is a complete decision management suite where clients can integrate 1st and 3rd party data, deploy machine learning models, manage business rules, monitor performance, and continuously optimize performance.