Bill Waid, chief product and technology officer at FICO, and Alex Goldbloom, CIO central functions (risk & internal audit, HR & COO-led functions), at Nationwide Building Society, join theCUBE’s Rob Strechay at FICO World to explore how AI is transforming credit decisioning and operational agility. Their discussion focuses on the strategic collaboration between FICO and Nationwide and how AI is being embedded into financial workflows.
Waid explains how FICO’s customer-level data insights and AI models support faster, more flexible decision-making across the enterprise. Goldbloom shares how Nationwide’s shift to cloud-based, AI-enabled infrastructure has accelerated credit approvals and improved customer satisfaction.
The conversation also highlights the importance of cross-functional alignment and human oversight as institutions embrace automation. Waid and Goldbloom present a clear-eyed look at how digital transformation is reshaping financial services from the inside out.
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Bill Waid, FICO & Alex Goldbloom, Nationwide
Bill Waid, chief product and technology officer at FICO, and Alex Goldbloom, CIO central functions (risk & internal audit, HR & COO-led functions), at Nationwide Building Society, join theCUBE’s Rob Strechay at FICO World to explore how AI is transforming credit decisioning and operational agility. Their discussion focuses on the strategic collaboration between FICO and Nationwide and how AI is being embedded into financial workflows.
Waid explains how FICO’s customer-level data insights and AI models support faster, more flexible decision-making across the enterprise. Goldbloom shares how Nationwide’s shift to cloud-based, AI-enabled infrastructure has accelerated credit approvals and improved customer satisfaction.
The conversation also highlights the importance of cross-functional alignment and human oversight as institutions embrace automation. Waid and Goldbloom present a clear-eyed look at how digital transformation is reshaping financial services from the inside out.
CIO, Risk & Internal AuditNationwide Building Society
Bill Waid, chief product and technology officer at FICO, and Alex Goldbloom, CIO central functions (risk & internal audit, HR & COO-led functions), at Nationwide Building Society, join theCUBE’s Rob Strechay at FICO World to explore how AI is transforming credit decisioning and operational agility. Their discussion focuses on the strategic collaboration between FICO and Nationwide and how AI is being embedded into financial workflows.
Waid explains how FICO’s customer-level data insights and AI models support faster, more flexible decision-making acros...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
What were some of the biggest challenges that Nationwide brought to FICO and how did FICO help Nationwide and businesses like them with similar complexities?add
How long did it previously take Nationwide to process credit decisions before implementing the new process?add
What are the potential benefits of Nationwide understanding credit in a more multidimensional way and taking into account various cues and activities in a customer's life in order to provide a more personalized and faster service for loan approvals?add
What are some key aspects of the platform that enable Alex and Nationwide Building Society to grow their business and make it agile?add
>> Hello, and welcome back to FICO World 25 from Hollywood, Florida. We're bringing this to a crescendo, I guess you could say, really digging into the intelligence revolution and understanding how information and data are shaping credit and risk across the world. So I think what I couldn't be more excited to have these two fellows join me and wrap things up today and really bring things around is that I have Bill Waid, who's the chief product and technology officer for FICO. Welcome on board here.
Bill Waid
>> Thank you.
Rob Strechay
>> And Alex Goldbloom, who's the portfolio CIO for Nationwide Building Society out of the UK. Welcome on board as well.
Alex Goldbloom
>> Thanks a lot, Rob.
Rob Strechay
>> So I think, again, there's a lot of things that I've heard this week that are really, really endear me to the way that you go about building product here. And I think part of it is the partnership that you have with your customers and really how you kind of listen to some of their challenges and understand that that was on display during the keynote all this morning. What were some of the biggest challenges that Nationwide brought to you and how do you see them adopting AI-driven workflows and decision making and really how did FICO help Nationwide and businesses like them with similar complexities?
Bill Waid
>> Yeah, I think first and foremost had the opportunity to connect with Alex early on in their process. And like many organizations, they were looking for a technology upgrade and more specifically, they were looking to move to banking as a service and get into a cloud-based offering. I think beyond that though, which is equally important to talk about is there was the unification across their lines of business and the ability to get a customer level view and sort of use that as a stepping stone to drive incremental business. And this is something we see in a lot of customers where they start from this perspective and actually to take and coin your phrase, what happens after that is they're looking to exploit what they've actually have, and exploit's a good word here because it builds on itself and it grows over time. And we traditionally see AI as a mechanism to improve the outcomes that they're looking for. And it's a tool, it's not the be all end all, it's just part of the overall decisioning process that they're looking to... And bringing that AI capability into the data that's available to actually help them get to that better business outcome.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I mean to me that makes a lot of sense about that partnership and helping. But again, that transition, I look at it and go the credit decisions that are done on the FICO platform and that it's helping you with your business monthly, how much volume is that really? Because again, people may not know Nationwide, so kind of help us understand in that and how it fits in and FICO platform fits in with that.
Alex Goldbloom
>> So first off, let me just start by thanking Bill, I mean and the team for all the collaboration and the journey. It seems like that since we met in London and it's gone quickly. So Nationwide is a mutual, it's the biggest building society in the world. I mean about 22 million customers in the UK, around about one in six of all of the mortgages in the UK are with Nationwide. And that generates, as you say, it generates a lot of volume. We're looking around a million and a half credit risk decisioning steps each month. So that's a fair volume going through the platform.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I think again, there's got to be some sort of ROI for having faster decisioning. What kind of ROI have you seen out of this? Seeing it's, you said fairly new, but still everybody's looking for their ROI.
Alex Goldbloom
>> Yeah, I mean ultimately the return is determined by our customer outcomes and what they're looking for, they're looking for pace, transparency, and safety. So they're looking for something that used to take months to get a credit decision. To be there, you get a soft decision in minutes and then the actual process on the credit side can be completed within two weeks. So quicker decisions means more volume for Nationwide as well, but it also means happier customers.
Rob Strechay
>> And from Nationwide's perspective, and when you look at that in the old way, how long would it have taken previously to this?
Alex Goldbloom
>> It could take a couple of months, a lot of paper involved, checking, these sorts of things. So what we're really driving at is a straight-through process for our customers, which they can access at any time of the day or night, seven days of the week, and they can feel comfortable that it's going to be very little in the way of manual dropouts. They shouldn't really have to talk to too many people on the phone unless they really want to.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah. So to me that gives that better customer experience as well, which has been another theme that we've seen at FICO World. But Bill, what are some of the businesses you deal with again, what are some of the challenges they face as they transform themselves, digitally transform, and more towards these data-driven decisions? Because I think everybody, there's the tech side of it, but there's also the business side of it as well.
Bill Waid
>> There absolutely is. And in fact, the relationship we have with Nationwide Building Society actually started here in a conversation in London where we set off on this journey. And Alex, like many of our customers, opened up and said, "I need to make sure we're doing this the right way." This is something we want to make sure that we're getting the right advice and we get the right footstep forward to bring about the best results. And that partnership is key. First of all, it starts a dialogue around how and what their objectives are so that we can align to those. But then it actually brings about the alignment of the technology and how to use it, but more importantly in the processes and the change management that they actually need to put to it. So if you think about what the platform's doing, it's essentially opening up business to control an agile-based process to refine the way they do business. And you need to stop thinking about it as programming and you need to think about it as a mechanism to enable the business to agilely move forward with what they need to, to come to the outcome. And one of the things that beyond the technology and that approach, one of the things that typically happens is when you start pulling multiple lines like mortgages and card and personal loans together, you've got different stakeholders involved, you've also got different functional leaders involved. Marketing starts getting involved. It's not just the business owners, the risk people want to get involved about the overall exposure that they have to the consumer. And so it naturally leads to this process of collaboration and coordination across multiple organizations. And if you set out with that in mind, you end up getting greater lifts out of the platform and the use of it. And so there is this change management and business impact as well as the technology itself. Once you understand that, the technology part becomes a little easier.
Alex Goldbloom
>> I mean, you're building for your business outcome, you're not building because you want to build technology. Technology is the means to the end rather than the end with all of these things.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I mean, totally agree. I think anytime that I've looked at it that if you build to the business, but what were some of the hurdles that you had to overcome in this transition?
Alex Goldbloom
>> So cloud for Nationwide, like many organizations, particularly in a regulated sector, is still fairly new. And it's trying to always highlight the upside to your business in terms of time to market, scalability, et cetera. But at the same time, making them feel comfortable they're not going to expose your customers and ultimately the company's P&L. So even though as a mutual we have a P&L to all kinds of reputational damage, it's taking them on that journey, which is saying, "Yes, it's different, but in a way that's positive." So getting our standards in place, getting people comfortable, that was a challenge. And then the way of working, which has become much, much more focused on a configuration of the software to make it do the things that we want to do in terms of the business outcome rather than the infrastructure. So people have had to change their skills, their roles, et cetera. So you're designing for a business outcome, but you're also designing for a change in operating model as well.
Rob Strechay
>> So what are the benefits that your customers are seeing by getting a more personalized, faster service that helps them get to that loan faster?
Alex Goldbloom
>> So I think ultimately where Nationwide will be, will understand credit in a much more multidimensional way. Bill talked about some of these things with us earlier today and that a credit decision, which was the product of maybe four or five data points around a customer which were fairly flat and standardized, is now going to become the product of all sorts of other cues that might be occurring in their lives, either in terms of how they interact with Nationwide, what they look at on their mobile app, or on our website, but also potentially activities in their broader lives that we're able to pick up. So we talk about a 360 degree view of the customer, and credit risk is an element of that, but ultimately it's about servicing a customer need, really understanding that and then making sure that you really know that customer` when you make that credit decision so that you don't either fail to lend when you should lend or lend when you shouldn't lend.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I mean again, as the portfolio CIO, you must get a good view across on this. And how has the intelligent enterprise that FICO is bringing to bear really helped you refine your business strategy and what are some of the improvements that you've seen?
Alex Goldbloom
>> It's definitely an enabler and it's also a flexible and an agile enabler in terms of if we want to create new entry points for data into the FICO platform, it's there if you like... The plugs are already there to put in and the place to put them is there as well. Whereas if you roll back time, 10, 15 years ago, you were into significant technology change in order to move just a few steps. So agility is probably the key thing, but it's also the way in which FICO as a business operates. It's not like, "Here's a product, it's painted black, take it," right? It's, what is it the product that you want? Can we work on that together? What is the outcome you're trying to... So it's the sense of co-innovation partnership that you started with at the beginning. That is a defining factor in success, I think, across both organizations.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, no, I think that makes total sense. And it actually hits on kind of another thought. And Bill, when you look across the financial services industry, it's been definitely rapidly evolving. And how does FICO really and the FICO platform help banks and financial services adapt to these new markets and really have that agile capability?
Bill Waid
>> Yeah, I think to sort of answer that question, I'm going to take something that Alex just said that's kind of keyed to understand. Our platform and our approach is actually to enable Alex and Nationwide Building Society to take their business and make it agile so that they can grow that business. The key part of that is it's their business. It's the way they do business, it's their data, it's their customer, it's their products, it's their offering, it's their risk assessment, it's the way they do business. So you got to bear that in mind. So what we offer is the ability for that platform to enable what they need to do on a day-to-day basis, both from initially and on an ongoing operations perspective. And so some of the key things we've already covered, but to reiterate some of them, personalization, one, is a key aspect of what we bring to the platform and it starts with understanding your consumer and meeting them where they're at. The second one is transparency into the decisions that are being made. That's critically important for many reasons. Alex mentioned it's important to the customer to have transparency. It's important to the regulators to have transparency, but most importantly, it's important to the business because if you have transparency into what is happening, you can look at it and say, "Well, how do I improve that and make that better?"
Alex Goldbloom
>> Absolutely.
Bill Waid
>> The next thing that I would say after that is that there is an organization involved here. This isn't technology. These are people that have KPIs and objectives for driving business growth. And so you have marketing functions, you have pricing functions, you have risk functions, you have fraud functions across an organization and you need to bring them together and they need a way of collaborating, having visibility and transparency into what is going on and building best practices around the consumer because they still have their business to run. The third one is, is that we see a lot of use of AI to improve the outcomes, and AI has a place, it's a tool, but remember this is a human business. It involves human beings and it's controlled by humans. And so the tool is the AI and it helps facilitate, but it's not the be all end all. And the final element that I would say, and Alex said this better than I can, it comes down to the agility and it's the business agility. It's that transparency understanding the outcome, knowing what you could do to improve that decision, and quickly making that so that you can make the experience for the consumer that much better. That pretty much sums up what we do as a platform.
Rob Strechay
>> Yeah, I think that is so right on for how listening to the customer and going through those five steps and helping them really understand the decision around that and how the platform will help them with that as well. Final question to you, Bill. What do you see as the north star that you want for the FICO platform to be for customers going forward?
Bill Waid
>> I think Alex mentioned this, I mentioned it earlier today. We exist because of our customers and our product gets better because of the feedback we get from our customers, and we work with purpose across what those things are, what that feedback says and what they're looking for. If I were to look into the future several years ahead and I were to describe what a good outcome would be, we need to make it easier for the business to interact with this platform and get out of it the operational information they need. And you don't have to go far to think about where that might be if you've used ChatGPT or any kind of interface like that, the future isn't ChatGPT, but that kind of interface, that ability to extract information, that's the future of making a platform like FICO that much better. I'll leave it at that.
Rob Strechay
>> That's great. I love that. Again, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate it, Bill and Alex, this is, I think everything that I've heard here and how the customer is really the focus and how you partner with the customer to really bring the value. There's very few places that I've been in the last two years of the AI hype cycle where you can say, you can see the ROI of AI, and I think this is definitely one of the places, one of the few places I've been where you can see that. So thanks for coming on board and thanks for sharing your stories.
Alex Goldbloom
>> It was a pleasure. Thank you.
Bill Waid
>> Thank you.
Rob Strechay
>> And thank you for watching FICO World 25 from Hollywood, Florida. It's been a packed day. You've probably missed some stuff. Go back and see that on Demand, it'll be there. I'm Rob Strechay, managing director with theCUBE Research. It's been a pleasure being here, and I'll see you soon.
Rob Strechay