Once fully implemented, FICO Blaze Advisor will be the single risk engine that Nationwide uses to automate all risk decisions for mortgage lending and personal loans initially, with roll-out to the rest of the portfolio in the future.

Nationwide's Strategic Risk Infrastructure initiative aims to give its risk management group greater agility to respond to changes in customer behaviour, markets and regulations. FICO Blaze Advisor enables risk managers to quickly change decision strategies, dramatically improving agility and business performance.

FICO Blaze Advisor will meet Nationwide's demands for greater decision consistency by providing a single decision engine for all of Nationwide's risk decisions, replacing the disparate systems currently used in its mortgage and personal loans operations. It will also improve decisions through better data quality, and reduce the complexity and cost of the building society's infrastructure. FICO Blaze Advisor will provide an enterprise rule repository allowing rules to be deployed on different platforms, including Java, COBOL and .NET.

With 15 million members and more than £190 billion in assets, Nationwide is the world's largest building society, and one of the top three savings providers and mortgage lenders in the UK.
"To serve our members with the most competitive prices, our team needs to be able to adjust to the market faster," said Henry Jordan, head of retail credit risk at Nationwide Building Society. "By using FICO Blaze Advisor, we can continuously update our policies and offers, while keeping our risk at the appropriate level. FICO provided the most comprehensive, flexible and cost-effective way for us to manage decisions across our enterprise."

"Like the most forward-looking financial institutions, Nationwide is investing in centralised decision management to improve agility and stay ahead in a highly competitive market," said Mike Gordon, FICO vice president and managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "This is a big change from the past, when every channel, product and decision area required a different point system. FICO provides a decision management platform that gives lenders and insurers sharper control over risk while substantially reducing IT complexity and cost."