When policymakers talk about consumer protection or market stability, pricing is often treated as a blunt instrument. Cap rates, fee limits, and interest ceilings are framed as straightforward levers to improve affordability. In practice, pricing changes rarely operate in isolation—and banks respond accordingly. That reality was recently highlighted by This Week in Fintech , which cited Ensemblex co-founder Shawn Budde on how banks and incumbents react to regulatory and polic

For growing fintech lenders, renegotiating a credit facility is both an art and a science. Most companies approach it as a purely financial negotiation — rate, advance rate, covenants, prepayment terms. But the strongest negotiating position rarely comes from spreadsheets alone. It comes from performance data . A fintech we worked with had completed almost two years under its first institutional debt facility. When they entered the facility, the business was young: limited co

Lenders know their own portfolios inside and out. But when it comes to growth, risk management, and product strategy, the smartest players don’t just look inward — they look outward. “Off-us” data — information about customer behavior and lending performance outside a company’s own book — is becoming a critical lever for success. Here are a few ways we’ve seen lenders use off-us data to sharpen decisions: Benchmarking Performance One lender in Asia used bureau data to compare

Running tests has technically never been easier. With highly configurable back-end tech and sophisticated data analysis tools widely available, even early-stage lenders with small teams can run a sophisticated testing program. The ease is a double-edged sword though, as it's also become easy to drown your insights in noise with sloppy testing. To make sure testing brings meaningful results, follow these four principles. 1. You need a learning agenda. And a budget, too. There

At Ensemblex, we work with lenders across the fintech ecosystem — from startups to scaled portfolios — and we see many people making the same mistakes when measuring risk on revolving credit products. These mistakes lead to bad decisions, mispriced risk, and inaccurate expectations for portfolio performance. Here are some of the most common pitfalls and how to avoid them. 1. Measuring Risk “Vertically” Instead of Horizontally Many lenders look at risk in time slices — delinqu

FICO and Vantage scores are well-known, widely used, and easily accessible. Meanwhile, building a custom credit model can take significant resources. So why build your own? Let's dive into how FICO and Vantage work, how custom models differ, and why custom models can deliver meaningful performance gains. What Are FICO and Vantage? FICO and Vantage scores are generic, off-the-shelf credit scores built using credit bureau data from TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. FICO has be

Lending is a cash flow business. Every decision you make — from marketing spend to credit policy to pricing — has a long-term economic...

If you’ve built credit underwriting models, you're familiar with the modeling metric called “AUC.” AUC is the primary metric used to...