Case Study: Major Consumer Credit Lender achieves 51% charge-off reduction and tens of millions in annual savings with Zest AI

Reduce risk without giving up revenue. Zest safely deploys AI-powered underwriting to help you reduce credit losses across your portfolio

Major Consumer Credit Lender faced sharply rising charge-offs that forced it to largely stop marketing personal loans to near-prime customers. To address this, the lender engaged Zest AI to deploy AI-powered underwriting that could better distinguish creditworthy borrowers from risky ones and restore safe marketing to previously excluded segments.

Zest AI evaluated more than 20,000 borrower characteristics from bureau and in‑house data to create 450 model variables (about 17× the lender’s prior set), enabling swap-set analyses and portfolio rebalancing. The Zest AI solution delivered a 51% reduction in charge-off rate, roughly 30% risk reduction with the same portfolio size, and tens of millions of dollars in annual savings.