Case Study: First Hawaiian Bank improves credit card approvals and underwriting automation with Zest AI

First Hawaiian Bank boosts approvals 25% with Zest AI

First Hawaiian Bank, a major financial institution in Hawai'i, faced a challenge with its traditional credit scoring methods. These methods lacked granularity and required over 90% of applications to undergo manual review, limiting the bank's ability to scale safely and efficiently. To enhance its underwriting, the bank partnered with Zest AI for its AI-automated underwriting solution.

Zest AI implemented a customized machine learning model that integrated seamlessly with the bank's systems. This solution dramatically increased automated decisioning for credit cards to 55%, a 13x improvement, and increased instant approvals by 9x. The model also improved risk assessment accuracy, with approved accounts outperforming exceptions by a factor of 4x. As a result, First Hawaiian Bank increased its overall approval rates by 25% and allowed its underwriters to focus on more complex cases.

First Hawaiian Bank