Volvo Cars Approves Sales and Leases Faster Using FICO Platform

Rollout of new originations technology across B2C, B2B and fleet segments improves speed, ensures affordability and gives in-house software team more control; Volvo Cars has won a 2024 FICO® Decision Award for Customer Onboarding & Management

FICO World – FICO (NYSE: FICO)

Highlights:

• Volvo Cars has strategically leveraged FICO® Platform to revolutionize its customer onboarding process across B2C, B2B and fleet segments
• Volvo Cars improved its speed, ensured buyers’ affordability and gained agility
• Volvo Cars has won a 2024 FICO® Decision Award for Customer Onboarding & Management

Today at FICO® World, the industry's leading analytic and AI event, global analytics software leader FICO announced that Volvo Cars has strategically leveraged FICO® Platform to revolutionize its customer onboarding process across B2C, B2B, and fleet segments. FICO’s cloud-hosted platform ensures swift real-time approvals, with credit checks completed in a matter of seconds. Volvo has won a 2024 FICO® Decision Award for Customer Onboarding & Management.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/fico-platform

“We originally launched FICO Platform for subscriptions, and due to its success, we made it the backbone for all online orders, streamlining leasing and purchasing processes,” said Sujitha Davidson, product manager at Volvo Cars. “This strategic partnership underscores Volvo Cars' commitment to embracing cutting-edge technologies for a seamless and efficient customer experience.”

Employing FICO decisioning capabilities on FICO Platform, Volvo has established a scalable and robust credit assessment solution that seamlessly integrates internal and external data sources. The platform facilitates transparent and error-minimized decision flows, emphasizing automation in underwriting processes and providing a singular source for all necessary data.

Reducing the Decision Time

Volvo needed to reduce the average decision time and promptly collect the required documents for risk assessment by reaching out to the customer at the earliest opportunity. This avoided repeat requests for documentation, and process delays that could lead to lost sales.

To minimize processing time, FICO® Platform generates a list of required documents tailored to specific referral reasons when customers are checking out online. They have 24 hours to upload, which accelerates the process. Utilizing a dynamic document upload process resulted in a 75% submission rate among customers who were presented with the document upload list. Assessments were completed in just an hour for these customers, compared to 11 hours when they did not upload or 17 hours when not requested.

Ensuring Affordability

Inflation has the potential to change a customer’s ability to afford a car, which is particularly a problem with BTO (build to order) cars that can take up to a year to complete. Volvo needed to ensure that customers can still afford products around the time of car delivery.

“In the UK market, we had issues where a customer had an ongoing contract but might no longer be able to afford the car payments due to losing their job,” Davidson reported. “Given the length of the BTO timeframe and the changing economic difficulties, we needed to reassess affordability to see if the customer could still afford the car. We don’t want to sell a car to someone who can’t afford it.”

In response to this challenge and to ensure the continued affordability of cars for customers upon delivery, an automated procedure was implemented to reinitiate soft credit checks on customers and reassess their creditworthiness. This occurs if it has been over 90 days since the first risk assessment. “This is a soft check, so it doesn’t impact the consumer’s credit score,” said Davidson. The automated workflow for the second credit assessment has saved 971 hours in manual labour.

Promoting In-House Software Development

“To enhance our control, agility, and cost-effectiveness, it was essential for our in-house development team to have the tools to build in an agile manner,” said Davidson. “Internal software development offers numerous benefits, including swift responsiveness to changes, retention of knowledge, adaptability with iterative development, and strategic alignment.”

With FICO® Platform, the Volvo Cars team can customize software solutions according to specific needs and requirements; increased authority over features, functionality, and the user interface guarantees precise alignment of the software with business processes and objectives. Thanks to FICO's assistance, the software development and maintenance have been effectively brought in-house. This led to a 50% increase in the number of new features developed in a year.

“Volvo has made dramatic strides in the competitive car market worldwide,” said Nikhil Behl, chief marketing officer at FICO. “Their innovative processes and commitment to customer service demonstrate how FICO can power the future of auto sales.”

“In recognizing Volvo Cars, we commend their innovative approach to streamlining processes, notably the incorporation of a 90-day credit reassessment mechanism,” said Paul Mah, senior editor, CDO Trends and one of the FICO Decision Awards judges. “This reduces risk for both the company and the customer. We were also impressed by the sheer amount of labor hours saved through their dynamic solutions. Volvo's commitment to efficiency and customer-centricity sets a commendable standard in the automotive industry.”

FICO® Platform revolutionizes how organizations make decisions and apply intelligence across the customer lifecycle. It creates an “enterprise intelligence network” that powers customer connections. This creates a radical new way to operationalize data-driven decisioning and AI with responsible AI at the core and the agility to adapt to our changing world.

To see the full list of this year’s FICO® Decision Awards winners, check out: https://www.fico.com/en/decisionsawards

About the FICO® Decision Awards

The FICO Decision Awards recognize organizations that are achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions. A panel of independent judges with deep industry expertise evaluates nominations based on measurable improvement in key metrics; demonstrated use of best practices; project scale, depth and breadth; and innovative uses of technology. The 2024 judges are:

• Andrew Birmingham, editor, Mi3
• Eric Kavanagh, CEO Bloor Group and host, InsideAnalysis
• Elizabeth Lumley, deputy editor, The Banker
• Paul Mah, senior editor, CDO Trends
• Laura Martins, editor, IT Forum
• Paul Robinson, VP credit management at Canadian Tire Bank (Previous Winner)
• Shiv Sehgal, EVP audience analytics at RSG Media (Previous Winner)
• Nick Vitchev, director at Chartis

The winners of the FICO Decision Awards will be spotlighted at FICO® World 2024, April 15 – April 18, 2024 in San Diego, California.

About Volvo Cars

Volvo Cars was founded in 1927. Today, it is one of the most well-known and respected car brands in the world with sales to customers in more than 100 countries. Volvo Cars is listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange, where it is traded under the ticker “VOLCAR B”.

"For life. To give people the freedom to move in a personal, sustainable and safe way." This purpose is reflected in Volvo Cars' ambition to become a fully electric car maker by 2030 and in its commitment to an ongoing reduction of its carbon footprint, with the ambition to be a climate-neutral company by 2040.

As of December 2023, Volvo Cars employed approximately 43,400 full-time employees. Volvo Cars' head office, product development, marketing and administration functions are mainly located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo Cars' production plants are located in Gothenburg, Ghent (Belgium), South Carolina (US), Chengdu, Daqing and Taizhou (China). The company also has R&D and design centres in Gothenburg and Shanghai (China).

About FICO

FICO (NYSE: FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 100 countries do everything from protecting 4 billion payment cards from fraud, to improving financial inclusion, to increasing supply chain resiliency. The FICO® Score, used by 90% of top US lenders, is the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the US and has been made available in over 40 other countries, improving risk management, credit access and transparency.

Learn more at https://www.fico.com

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

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