Santander US Auto Business Recognized with 2025 FICO Decisions Award for Innovation in Machine Learning–Driven Credit Risk Analysis
Santander US Auto, one of the largest auto lenders in the United States, has been honored with the 2025 FICO® Decisions Award in the category of AI, Machine Learning & Optimization for its groundbreaking work in applying machine learning to credit risk analysis. The recognition was announced at the FICO® World 2025 conference, where global analytics software leader FICO highlighted Santander’s transformative use of its FICO® Platform to enhance credit decisioning and operational efficiency.
This prestigious award reflects Santander’s success in using advanced analytics to modernize its credit risk assessment framework amid a rapidly evolving economic and lending landscape. By implementing FICO Platform’s capabilities, the company has significantly improved its ability to evaluate auto loan applicants, adapt to market fluctuations, and optimize risk management strategies—all while improving model governance and accelerating deployment timelines.
Leveraging FICO Platform to Build Smarter Credit Risk Models
Santander US Auto manages a $60 billion asset portfolio and serves more than three million customers across the country. In recent years, the auto finance industry has faced considerable challenges, including rising vehicle prices, high interest rates, and increased demand for faster, more accurate credit decisioning. These shifts have made it imperative for lenders to reassess how they evaluate creditworthiness and manage risk.
To address these needs, Santander partnered with FICO to leverage the FICO® Platform, an enterprise-grade solution that enables businesses to build, deploy, and monitor advanced analytic models in a scalable and repeatable way. By integrating this platform into its operations, Santander has created a robust analytical infrastructure that allows the organization to modernize its approach to credit risk with greater speed, agility, and transparency.
“The FICO team has been instrumental in enabling the Auto business to use a unified platform to be more efficient and accelerate our timelines,” said Bruce Jackson, Head of the Santander US Auto Business and CEO of Santander Consumer. “FICO helped our modeling team reduce the number of tasks, allowing for our data team to focus on interpreting the analytics.”
Watch Santander share its transformation journey here: Santander Story on YouTube.
Three Key Credit Risk Functions Transformed
Santander has adopted FICO Platform to empower three mission-critical credit risk functions:
- Credit Application Decisioning:
The platform allows Santander to approve or decline auto loan applications more efficiently using machine learning algorithms that evaluate creditworthiness in real time. - Adverse Action Assignment:
With increased regulatory scrutiny and the need for transparency, Santander uses the platform to ensure adverse action notices are assigned consistently and fairly based on data-driven insights. - Probability of Default for Pricing Models:
Santander integrates probability of default (PD) calculations into its pricing strategies, enabling more accurate risk-based pricing and improving overall loan portfolio performance.
This end-to-end use of machine learning and analytics not only streamlines credit assessment but also enables the lender to respond rapidly to market changes. With traditional systems, recalibrating credit models involved manual processes and lengthy delays. Now, Santander can bring new models and strategies into production faster, ensuring the business remains competitive in a challenging macroeconomic environment.
The Need for Agility in a Volatile Market
In today’s auto lending landscape, traditional credit risk assessment tools are often too rigid and slow to accommodate the rapid changes in consumer behavior and economic trends. Rising interest rates and high vehicle prices have made affordability a key concern for both borrowers and lenders, prompting a reevaluation of how risk is measured and managed.
Santander’s adoption of FICO’s modern platform has enabled it to shift from static, manual modeling workflows to a dynamic, real-time system. This flexibility is crucial as the company navigates an increasingly competitive environment while maintaining strong portfolio performance and customer satisfaction.
“Santander’s adoption of machine learning is an example of how lenders can modernize credit risk analysis,” said Nikhil Behl, President of Software at FICO. “Building a model more efficiently is imperative in today’s competitive market. Santander’s success in streamlining processes, reducing manual efforts, and gaining real-time insights into credit risk sets a strong benchmark for the industry.”
Industry Recognition and Broader Impact
The FICO® Decisions Awards recognize organizations worldwide that are achieving exceptional results through the innovative use of FICO technology. Award submissions are reviewed by a panel of independent industry experts, who evaluate each project based on measurable improvements in key business metrics, scale and scope, technology innovation, and adherence to best practices.
“What impressed me was how Santander transformed a slow, manual process into a seamless, real-time system,” said Joe McKendrick, analyst, senior contributor at Forbes, and one of this year’s FICO Decisions Awards judges. “It didn’t just tweak its risk models—Santander overhauled how it makes decisions, making them faster, smarter, and more reliable.”
Santander’s win in the AI, Machine Learning & Optimization category reflects a broader shift across the financial services industry toward embracing intelligent automation and predictive analytics. With the power of platforms like FICO, institutions can make more accurate decisions, reduce risk, and enhance customer outcomes.
To view the full list of 2025 FICO® Decisions Awards winners, visit: FICO Decision Awards.
About the FICO® Decisions Awards
The annual FICO Decisions Awards recognize outstanding achievements in the use of FICO solutions across various industries and disciplines. Winning organizations demonstrate innovative use of analytics and technology to achieve measurable business improvements.
Judges for the 2025 FICO Decisions Awards included:
- Regan Goble, Risk Analytics Senior Manager at Westpac NZ (Previous Winner)
- Megha Kumar, Research Vice President at IDC
- Joe McKendrick, Analyst and Senior Contributor at Forbes
- Luiz Pacete, Technology and Marketing Industry Influencer
- Ali Paterson, Founder and Editor-in-Chief at Fintech Finance
- Mike Roberts, Head of Unsecured Retail Risk at HSBC UK (Previous Winner)
- Erin Stillwell, EVP, Payment Partnerships at Blankfactor
- Allan Tan, Group Editor-in-Chief at Cxociety
Each judge brings deep experience in analytics, financial services, fintech, and innovation, providing a well-rounded perspective on what constitutes meaningful technological progress in today’s fast-moving marketplace.
