Through this alliance, IBM is now a global reseller of Fair Isaac's core analytic capabilities for financial services providers. Banks and lenders worldwide can now easily and effectively tap into Fair Isaac's proven, standard-setting predictive analytics and decision technologies, which have been optimized for IBM's On Demand operating environment. The joint initiative is a direct outgrowth of IBM's increased focus on delivering best-in-class software and tools to meet the needs and requirements of specific industries.

A major Japanese financial institution with a business reach across the Asia-Pacific region recently became the first institution to sign on for the combined offering.

"The world's top financial institutions turn first to IBM for the best in business consulting services and operational solutions and turn first to Fair Isaac for the best in risk management, fraud control and account management solutions," said June Felix, general manager of e-payments, risk and compliance at IBM. "The synergies gained through this alliance deepen our industry expertise in the financial services arena and give our customers streamlined access to unprecedented value across all areas of their business."

The IBM-Fair Isaac alliance provides financial institutions with software and tools that help them solve the most pressing challenges they face today, including increasingly fierce competition, rising fraud losses, new regulatory mandates and barriers to attracting, cross-selling and retaining profitable customers. Fair Isaac analytics deliver precise, actionable insights into customer behavior and enable automated decision strategies that effectively address each of these challenges.

"As banks and lenders around the world face increasingly penetrated markets and other challenges to growth, they are realizing that future gains will be rooted in their ability to expand the value and potential of their existing customer base," said Bill Nowacki, vice president of Professional Services and Channel Partners at Fair Isaac. "Augmenting IBM's world-class business consulting offerings with our unmatched predictive and customer insight technologies can put financial institutions on a fast track to new levels of performance and profitability."

In addition, Fair Isaac and IBM plan to bring new solutions to market in the future that deliver breakthrough value to financial institutions through joint product development and integration efforts.

A full range of Fair Isaac's analytic solutions will be available worldwide to financial services institutions on IBM's scalable infrastructure. These include powerful software solutions that support analytics-driven decision strategies for specific functions, as well as a suite of software and tools that enable and support Enterprise Decision Management (EDM).

Financial services providers using the IBM platform can now implement Fair Isaac's TRIAD(TM) adaptive control system, the world's leading account management system that is used to manage and optimize customer decisions for more than 65 percent of the world's credit cards. This includes TRIAD for Customer Management, which provides a coordinated picture of risk and rewards across accounts while helping institutions manage portfolio profitability goals. IBM users also can tap into Fair Isaac's Falcon(TM) Fraud Manager, the industry-standard fraud detection system currently used to protect 65 percent of all credit card transactions worldwide. Also available is Capstone(R) Decision Manager, which enables a fast, efficient, automated account origination process that can be used across the enterprise.

Through the alliance, financial institutions will be able to implement true EDM with tools that help them design, deploy, automate and manage optimal decisions across the entire organization. Key components of the EDM product suite include Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor, the leading software for creating and deploying business rules as part of an automated business system, and Fair Isaac Blaze Decision System, which applies rules and various decision-making criteria to help businesses make real-time decisions that reflect their business priorities. IBM has been offering and delivering Blaze Advisor to customers via its Websphere platform since 2001.

Another key component of Fair Isaac's EDM offering, Model Builder software, will be available to IBM customers. Model Builder gives businesses the power to quickly design and deploy their own sophisticated analytic models based on their unique historical data.

The two companies will also provide joint implementation and integration services. Consultants from IBM Business Consulting Services and Fair Isaac Professional Services help organizations assess needs and requirements, develop analytic strategies and ensure full value from each new technology investment.