Zoot Enterprises Launches New Credit Risk Management Solution

Company responds to industry demand for better approach to credit risk policy
development
SAN FRANCISCO & BOZEMAN, Mont.--(Business Wire)--
Zoot, a leading provider of advanced instant credit decisioning and loan
origination solutions, unveiled the company`s newest solution, Zoot`s Credit
Risk Lab. The Credit Risk Lab was launched earlier today during the Zoot
Webinar, "Take Back Control of Credit Risk Management." The solution was
designed to give credit risk managers the ability to rapidly respond to changing
market and consumer behavior. In a non-production environment, managers are now
able to experiment with new credit risk policy strategies to make better credit
decisions, faster.

"The concept of the Credit Risk Lab originated when Zoot was approached by a
top-five financial institution that had been looking for several years, without
success, for a way to deliver the most accurate, predictive scorecards to the
marketplace quickly and more efficiently," said Tom Johnson, vice president of
product development at Zoot. "The FI wanted to be able to create a new set of
unique, predictive credit characteristics without the significant time and cost
delays of its current process. The Credit Risk Lab allows FIs to quickly
evaluate consumer behavior against new ideas, using their own performance data,
and determine whether or not the proposed policy will be effective. This helps
financial institutions learn from experience, rather than simply react to their
environment."

For many financial institutions, today`s volatile market and radical consumer
behavior changes have made it impossible to accurately predict defaults and keep
credit policy relevant. Traditional processes to develop or refine policy can
take from six months to two years. As a result of this lengthy cycle, lenders
can`t respond quickly and have been forced to tighten policy and decisioning
parameters to immediately mitigate some risk. However, lenders recognize pulling
back on credit isn`t sustainable, and a need within the market for a new process
that allows effective policy to be developed more rapidly has emerged.

Zoot`s Credit Risk Lab addresses this need by providing lenders the ability to
significantly shorten the cycle of making changes to attributes and scorecards
to determine what is most predictive in the current environment. Business users
have complete control over the entire cycle of developing an idea, coding
attributes in the tool, running the attribute tests and evaluating the results.
The solution has an intuitive interface allowing users to experiment with
unlimited variations of attribute definitions to evaluate which will be the most
effective (this can all be accomplished without IT/programmer involvement).
Using the data from that analysis, credit risk managers can then identify a new
strategy in less than 48 hours.

"The first financial institution to implement Zoot`s Credit Risk Lab projects
savings of more than $2 million in the first 12 months following deployment,"
said James A. Franklin, chief sales officer for Zoot. "There is a high demand
within our prospect and client base for a solution that addresses market
volatility in a timely way. This solution brings increased operational
efficiency, consistency in credit risk policy across all lines of business and
the ability to quickly address changing market conditions."

For more information on effectively managing credit risk policy development in
today`s economy, read Zoot`s thought leadership brief "Developing Risk Policy in
a Dynamic Market."

About Zoot

Bozeman, Mont.-based Zoot Enterprises provides credit decisioning and loan
origination solutions through a configurable, scalable and reliable platform to
large and innovative U.S. financial services institutions. Visit
http://www.zootweb.com or call 406.556.7555 for more information.

For Zoot Enterprises
Media Contacts
Andrew McCaskill/Anna Stanley
678-781-7210/251-990-3559
or
Zoot
Eric Lindeen, 406-556-7449
Marketing Director

Copyright Business Wire 2009