Case Study: Coastal Credit Union achieves 26% approval increase and $12M/year in additional profit with Zest AI

Using AI to Spot More Good Borrowers with Coastal Credit Union

Coastal Credit Union, founded in 1967 and one of the largest and fastest-growing financial institutions in North Carolina, needed to expand its auto-lending credit box and deliver faster, more automated approvals—especially in indirect and digital channels—without adding risk or harming member experience. Reliance on FICO scores and MeridianLink’s rules engine proved too blunt below Tier A paper, so Coastal selected Zest AI (using Zest software) to pursue AI-driven lending and more accurate risk prediction.

Using Zest AI, Coastal built an AI-driven credit model with roughly 10x more variables (about 220 features) than before and trained it on previously unseen borrower data to better predict lower-credit applicants. The Zest AI model increased approval rates by 26%, generated an estimated $12M in additional profit per year and $150M in additional annual originations, while enabling higher automation and faster decisions in Coastal’s auto lending channels.

Coastal Credit Union

David Jacobs

Vice President of Consumer Lending