The agreement with Bank Renaissance Capital marks the first implementation of Fair Isaac's high-performance platform for new account decisions and processing in Russia. The bank chose Capstone Decision Manager to support its new consumer finance initiatives, including the processing of remote applications for installment credit on unsecured merchandise, such as electronics products, credit cards, auto loans and general purpose loans.

Capstone provides the workflow, database management and decision management framework for Bank Renaissance Capital's origination decisions. It is designed to increase processing flexibility and efficiency, improve the quality of credit decisions and lower the costs associated with processing applications.

"Bank Renaissance Capital needed a flexible, scalable system that would help us make consistently intelligent decisions at the individual customer level," said Fernando Silva, director of Risk at Bank Renaissance Capital. "With Fair Isaac's Capstone Decision Manager, we can optimize what we know about the individual needs and preferences of our customers and use that information to make customized offers, while controlling risk and increasing profitability. In addition, the ease and speed of implementation and localization in the Russian language made the product the right choice for us. Capstone provides a flexible platform to deal with the complexity of managing risk in Russia, which allowed us to expand the business profitability into more than 300 retailers in 27 cities across Russia in less than one year of operations."

The Russian consumer finance market is growing rapidly. Last year, the volume of issued consumer credits more than doubled to reach RUR300 billion (approximately $10 billion). According to the Russian Central Bank, retail lending to private citizens hit $15 billion by mid-2004, a 50 percent increase in six months, and up from just $1 billion since the start of 2000.

"Bank Renaissance Capital's selection of the Capstone solution is in direct response to increasing demand for retail credit in Russia," said Robert Duque-Ribeiro, vice president of International Sales at Fair Isaac. "Our origination offerings are uniquely positioned to help leading financial service providers such as Bank Renaissance Capital grow profitably. We look forward to broadening our direct presence in this emerging market and introducing new customers to the powerful benefits of this technology."