Nedbank - part of Nedbank Group, South Africa's fourth-largest banking group - will use FICOTM Model Builder across its retail business to develop predictive models, including models needed for complying with Basel regulations.

In addition, with FICOTM Model Builder, Nedbank can set up bespoke model development flows for different business units and subsidiaries. Model Builder provides the transparency and documentation needed for compliance and communication with South African regulators.

"We seek to be 'World Class at Managing Risk,' and the scorecard development process was an area where we identified the need for investment," said John Linfield, Head of the Retail Credit Lab for Nedbank. "We conducted an extensive evaluation process of tools available in the market to meet the requirements of our developers and to facilitate and simplify the audit and governance process for the Basel II models. We are confident that with FICO Model Builder we have an unmatched combination of modeling power and ease of use that will provide the best modeling tool available for a sophisticated analytics team like ours, while simplifying the audit and validation process."

Nedbank has worked extensively with PIC Solutions, FICO's partner in South Africa, which uses FICOTM Model Builder to develop scorecards. As part of the current agreement, FICO will also supply training to Nedbank, sharing FICO's own techniques for developing powerful models using the software.

"We have made FICO Model Builder 7.1 a dynamic, interactive and user-friendly system, so that modeling teams like Nedbank's can accelerate model development and deployment," said Mike Gordon, FICO vice president and managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "We're not just supplying Nedbank with the best modeling tool ever created for scorecard development, we're focused on increasing the bank's analytic capabilities by giving them access to our practices and analytic experts."

FICOTM Model Builder 7.1 combines industry breakthroughs in scorecard development functionality with a highly visual interface and 64-bit certification to solve very large modeling problems. Model Builder can reduce model deployment costs by as much as 75%, while shortening time-to-value and improving model ROI.

FICOTM Model Builder is one of FICO's Decision Management tools, which also include FICOTM Blaze Advisor® business rules management system and FICOTM Xpress Optimization Suite. FICO Model Builder is also the tool used by FICO analysts to build industry-leading scores and applications, including the FICO® Score and the models in FICO® TRIAD® Customer Manager.