Scores4All – NZ Entrepreneur Magazine

In Founder Focus we introduce entrepreneurs and change-makers working on innovative startups, social enterprises and SME’s around Aotearoa New Zealand.

At a glance

Founders: Carolyn Röhm and Eva Neves

Business: Scores4All

Founded: 2023

HQ: Auckland

Can you tell us a bit about your business?

We live in a world where access to credit can mean the difference between having an education or not; being able to fund a small business, or not. Credit risk is assessed using scorecards (models) for individuals and SMEs. Customers are accepted (or rejected) based on their assessed risk. Credit contract terms and conditions are also influenced by this risk assessment.

Banks and large Financial Services Organisations use scorecards to assess risk; however, smaller players don’t necessarily have access to these tools. There are three key barriers to scorecard adoption: complex historical data requirements, scarce internal IT, analytics and project resource availability, and failure to meet internal ROI hurdles. We’re changing that by bringing scoring as a service to market.

We take on all our clients’ modelling, ModelOps, model governance and model reporting requirements. We capture their data as records are scored and use this data to train new models. In doing this, we ensure that the most accurate and best models are deployed and used to assess credit risk.

Being able to assess credit risk better means that our customers can offer more favourable T&Cs to their customers, including those who they previously may not have been able to assess. This helps drive financial inclusion, and this helps drive economic prosperity. While we cannot drive financial inclusion ourselves, we can enable our customers to do this.

What’s the backstory for your business idea?

As consultants, we’ve seen our clients struggle with data requirements and model implementation, not to mention model reporting. As a Credit Risk Manager, I have first-hand experience of trying to justify the ROI, and the impact implementing models can have on other pieces of critical work.

We both have an innate drive to make things better, easier, less painful, and more effective. A few years ago, we were chatting about these issues and the barriers to scorecard adoption, and realised it would be phenomenal if there were some sort of automagical tech that made the pain stop.

Earlier this year, we decided to build the automagical tech required to make the pain of scorecard development and implementation projects go away.

What programmes, learning or mentoring, or resources have been of assistance so far?

In March this year, we were selected to be part of the Ministry of Awesome Electrify Accelerator. We received the best coaching, mentoring and support. I highly recommend joining this accelerator if the opportunity arises.

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