JOHANNESBURG, March 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

Highlights:

• SA Taxi changed its lending from manual to cloud-based automated decision making, increasing loan volumes by 25 percent.
• SA Taxi now processes 100 percent of applications in just ten minutes from submission, down from two hours.
• The adoption of a cloud solution has improved controls while automatically documenting an audit trail and capture of rules.
• SA Taxi won a 2019 FICO® Decisions Award for Cloud Deployment.

SA Taxi, a financier of over 10 percent of South Africa's minibus taxi fleet – the nation's most affordable public transport used by 15 million people daily – has introduced FICO's cloud-based decision management solution to drive lending growth of 25 percent. The FICO^® Blaze Advisor^® Decision Rules Management System has also reduced decision time on applications from two hours down to 10 minutes, while improving controls, capturing rules and creating an audit trail.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/products/fico-blaze-advisor-decision-rules-management-system

Rapid growth had meant the company's manual processing system was becoming overwhelmed – with a lack of consistent and timely decisions adversely affecting business growth.

"When credit changes were required, they were simply added to the queue with the rest of our IT changes – which always had a higher priority," said Itumeleng Nomlomo, senior credit analyst at SA Taxi. "This left the business with no option but to resort to manual decisioning, which really constrained our agility and created a number of issues such as inconsistent credit decisions."

SA Taxi implemented FICO's Blaze Advisor solution to integrate automated decision-making into its origination process. The decision management solution ensured reliable and consistent credit decisions that were in line with its strategy and business rules. Its cloud-based application lifted the infrastructure burden being placed on the business, which had become considerable. And its flexibility allowed SA Taxi's business managers to configure rules without development/technical support from FICO, as and when its strategy changed. 

"SA Taxi has embraced the power of a cloud deployed solution and reaped the rewards through incredible improvements in agility and efficiency," said Michelle Beetar, managing director for sub-Saharan Africa at FICO.  "By automating the decisioning element, the team has been able to spend more time on strategy, analytics and enhancing the current process."

For its achievements, SA Taxi won a 2019 FICO® Decisions Award for Cloud Deployment.

"SA Taxi has overcome the challenge of translating what seems to be a simple idea into a workable solution," said Denise Sleem, functional specialist Afrocentric Technologies, one of the FICO Decisions Awards judges. "SA Taxi has really impressed by building a flexible solution to support the growth needs of their business and their clients through their digital transformation project."

About SA Taxi
SA Taxi provides a vertically integrated platform ensuring the sustainability of the minibus taxi industry in South Africa. The services provided by SA Taxi include vehicle sales, finance, insurance and repairs. 

Established in 1996, the company focuses exclusively on the taxi industry and serves sole operators and businesses looking to purchase a new taxi, replacing a vehicle or expand a taxi fleet.  The organization finances over 10% of South Africa's taxi fleet.

About the FICO® Decisions Awards
The FICO Decisions Awards recognize organizations that are achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions. A panel of independent judges with deep industry expertise evaluates nominations based upon measurable improvement in key metrics; demonstrated use of best practices; project scale, depth and breadth; and innovative uses of technology. The 2019 judges are:

• Mike Gualtieri, VP and principal analyst at Forrester
• Sharon Kimathi, editor at FinTech Futures
• Leslie Parrish, analyst – retail banking at Aite
• Denise Sleem, functional specialist at Medscheme, 2018 winner
• Alex Woodie, managing editor at Datanami
• Les Yeamans, founder at RT Insights

The winners of the FICO Decisions Awards will be spotlighted at various FICO events in 2020 and win tickets to FICO® World 2021, the Decisions Conference, April 2021 in Orlando.

About FICO
FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956 and based in Silicon Valley, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 195 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 100 countries do everything from protecting 2.6 billion payment cards from fraud, to helping people get credit, to ensuring that millions of airplanes and rental cars are in the right place at the right time.

Learn more at www.fico.com.

Join the conversation on Twitter @FICO

FICO is a registered trademark of Fair Isaac Corporation in the US and other countries.

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SOURCE Fair Isaac Corporation

Vuyo Jacobs, Britespark Communications, vuyo@britespark.co.za, 010 001 0113