5 September 2023

The most recent Credit Scoring & Credit Control conference exceeded all expectations, standing as a resounding success. Below, you will find a summary of key statistics. Our next XIX conference is scheduled for August 27-29, 2025 in Edinburgh. Be sure to mark these dates in your calendars!

The Credit Scoring and Credit Control Conference serves as a pivotal convergence point for both academic experts and industry practitioners in quantitative risk modelling. Our 18th conference took place from August 30 to September 1, 2023, hosted at the customary Edinburgh Pollock Halls.

This year's conference garnered substantial attention, attracting nearly 400 attendees. Among these, 20% represented universities, including Edinburgh, Cambridge, Imperial College, Southampton, University of Western Ontario, Reykjavik, Humboldt Berlin, Shanghai, Nottingham Ningbo, KU Leuven, Louvain, Masaryk, Warsaw, Muenster, Nelson Mandela, University of Technology Sydney, and Hope College. The remaining 80% comprised professionals from prominent banking institutions, financial companies, consulting firms, and regulatory authorities, including the Bank of England, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Bank of Ireland, Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, Deloitte, Virgin Money, Barclays, Nationwide BS, FICO, Creditinfo, and Moody’s Analytics.

In a remarkable display of diversity, delegates coming from 166 different organizations, representing 34 countries worldwide. These included the UK, US, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Croatia, Poland, Brunei, China, Peru, Czech Republic, Mexico, Luxembourg, Hungary, Chile, Iceland, Finland, South Africa, Greece, France, Norway, South Korea, Brazil, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Argentina, Latvia, and Azerbaijan.

The conference featured over 100 rigorously selected research papers, organized into five parallel sessions, with an almost equal division between academic and practitioner authors. The presentations delved into the most pressing issues in credit risk, such as AI and machine learning applications, fairness and algorithmic bias, and the impact of the cost of living crisis and climate change.

Notably, the Best Paper Award, sponsored by Paragon, was presented to Stephen Miller from Equifax for his paper titled "A Flexible Machine Learning Approach to Repayment Capacity Estimation for Affordability Assessment," co-authored with Lewis Jordan, Felipe Avila, Terry Woodford, and Matthew Turner.

Our esteemed keynote speakers contributed significantly to the conference's success. They included:

  • Catarina Souza, Head of Division, Model Development and Review at the Bank of England, whose keynote was titled "The evolving role of Model Risk Management (MRM) in a changing world: A regulator's perspective."
  • Michaela Pagel, Roderick H. Cushman Associate Professor at Columbia Business School, Finance Division, who presented on "New Behavioral Research on Household Credit."
  • Dr. Scott Zoldi, Chief Analytics Officer at FICO, who discussed "Responsible AI in Credit Risk: Palatable, Interpretable, Ethical, and Auditable."
  • Dr. Joseph L. Breeden, CEO of Deep Future Analytics LLC, whose keynote addressed "The Challenges and Model Risk Management of Machine Learning Models."

In addition to these thought-provoking sessions, the conference also featured pre-conference workshops, poster sessions, and numerous networking opportunities. The conference organizers extend their heartfelt gratitude to all participants and sponsors, including Experian, FICO, Paragon Business Solutions, 4most, TransUnion, ACTICO, MRMIA, DirectID, and ThreeCs Limited.