Hiten Patel: Thank you for joining us today. I'm delighted to be joined by my colleague, Cosimo Schiavone, based in America, who leads a lot of our banking technology work in that space. And our guest today is Silvio Tavares, the CEO at VantageScore. Welcome both.
Silvio Tavares: Great to be with you, Hiten.
Cosimo Schiavone: Hi, Hiten.
Hiten: So let's start, Silvio with a brief intro to the role that you play at the company today and what does it do?
Silvio: Well, I'm president, CEO of VantageScore. VantageScore is one of the two national credit scoring companies. We've been around for over a decade and a half, and we are the leader in innovation in that space. Eight of the top 10 US banks use us, over 3000 banks and FinTechs use us across the United States. Last year we served up over 19 billion credit scores and over 200 million American consumers use our score to check their credit health online through apps like Credit Karma and even through leading banks, including Chase and Capital One use our score. I've been CEO for about two and a half years. It's been an amazing ride. And when we think about our company, we think on the one hand of technology and innovation, but on the other hand we think about our social impact. One of the things we do that's very different than other companies is we score about 30 million more Americans than conventional credit scores. And so it's exciting to be at the helm of a business that is not only at the forefront of technology, but it's also enabling a lot of consumers that historically have been underserved to get access to their first credit score and get their little piece of their American dream through access to credit.
Hiten: That's amazing. That's amazing. Thank you for the intro. And normally I then ask guests to talk about their journey to where they've got to, and I normally ask them to start from their first professional job and how they've ended up in the founder or CEO seat. But reading up, you've got a pretty amazing story from earlier on in the outset, so I'd love for you to just share what drew you to credit scoring and some of the impacts, some of the things that you experienced earlier on in life that kind of got to where you've got to. So I'd love you to share the longer form story behind where you've got to the seat today.
Silvio: Well, look, it's an incredible journey and I don't think there are very many folks that sort of, when they're eight or nine years old and their mom and dad asks them, what do you want to do when you grow up? They say “I want to be the CEO of a credit scoring company”, right? That's not a very common conversation. But look, I'm an immigrant, folks are listening to this as a podcast so they can't see me. But if they could, what they would see is they would see a person who looks African, and I'm an immigrant from Angola, west Africa, Portuguese speaking, which is why my name is Silvio Tavares. And we immigrated here to the United States when I was about 10 years old, and most immigrants landed in a new city. In our case it was Boston. And like most immigrants, the first thing you do is look for a home, right?
Silvio: You look for a home in a safe neighborhood, you want to make sure that you have good access to public schools. And that's exactly what my parents did. They found their dream home. And then my dad promptly went to the bank, Cambridge Savings Bank. He was a professor at Harvard, and he went to apply for a loan. He's like, I've got a PhD in economics. I got a good job. I got some money in the bank, I'm going to apply for a mortgage. And the application came back about after a week, and it came back denied. And my dad was very perplexed. He's like, why did you reject me? I'm like, you can't get a better borrower than me. And basically, what they said is, look, we're very sorry Dr. Tavares, but you don't have a credit report and you need that. And so I just remember one of my earliest memories was just like this new language I was hearing in this very odd sounding word- mortgage. And my parents were discussing it. Long story short, they had to take every dollar, a dime of their life savings and buy our first home in cash. And they made a very calculated bet that after three or four years they would be able to get a mortgage, refinance, get the cash out, and that's in fact what they did. And that, financing out that mortgage is what paid for my engineering degree and paid for my MBA and my law degree. And it's the reason why I had a chance to live my American dream. And so when we talk about financial inclusion, the unbanked, to me, that's more than just theory. It's my lived existence, my lived reality. And so it's really exciting to have the opportunity to make a big impact on enabling not just immigrants, but millions of Americans who have been here for generations, including folks that are black like me, Latinos, Asians, to really enable access to credit when they're in fact credit worthy.
Silvio: And from a career perspective, what I would say is the arc that has really formed my career is an excitement and engagement with financial data. We live in the age of big data and AI and everybody talks about it, but for me, what's formed the arc of my career is the story that financial data tells. There's this old saying “Tell me and show me where you spend your money, and I will show you where your heart is”. And it's absolutely true. My first job coming out of college with my bachelor's degree in electrical engineering I was working AT&T Bell Labs. I was so excited. I thought I was going to invent the next semiconductor, and instead they assigned me to the AT&T Universal Card, and I was terribly deflated. I was like, I thought I was going to do something interesting. And at the time, AT&T was the second largest issuer of credit cards in the country.
Silvio: They had innovated, they had a credit card and a calling card in one. And here I was this young engineer that wanted to change a world with technology. And one day I got access to the database, which enabled me to see consumers, all of their credit card transactions and all their calling card transactions. And I knew this was really big, because looking at that data, I could tell exactly who that person was. It was like looking at a painting of someone because you could see all the details and contents of their life through their financial data. So that's where my career started. I then went on to run large data analytics businesses for First Data, Fiserv, the nation's largest payments processor, and then Visa where I ran their data analytics business, the world's largest payments network. And it taught me the art and science of using financial data for everything from preventing fraud, to using financial data for digital marketing, to ultimately where I am today, leading company that uses financial data to assess credit worthiness. And so that's really been the arc of my career. It's been an amazing ride.
Hiten: Thank you for sharing. It's a really fascinating arc as you describe. And just link back for me a little bit how you felt. I think you said you were 10 years old when that played out to when you're in your seat now doing what you're doing around credit scoring, financial inclusion, talk to me about that bridge and link. How much are you channeling from how much you felt, how much you remembered, what went on then to the privileged seat that you get to sit in now, and the influence and the impact you have? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Silvio: Well, I think the reality is that America Incorporated is one of the most powerful and unique experiments in humanity. The country was founded on this ideal that all people deserve equal opportunity, and we built an entire system of capitalism around that. But what we've realized is that through the history, a large number of groups have not been granted equal access to opportunity. And so I was one of those folks when me and my family, when we immigrated here, we didn't have equal access to financial opportunity because we couldn't access the credit system. And so one of the big parts of my role is I advocate for greater financial inclusion, which by the way, is not just a moral imperative, it's also a financial imperative for most banks. In my home state of California, 58% of the population is African American, like me, Asian American, or Latino.
Silvio: So it's a majority minority state. So if you're a bank and you can't serve those customers, that's a big financial problem. You can't maximize your revenue and profits. And so I talk a lot about that in my work, and I spend a lot of time advocating for financial inclusion in the Halls of Congress, because we've built some parts of our financial ecosystem to not allow competition and credit scoring, particularly in the mortgage space, used to be one of them until recently when the FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency] allowed VantageScore to compete in that space. But more importantly, a lot of parts of our financial system have rules which prevent financial inclusion. And so I spend a lot of time advocating for that with regulators, with members of Congress, and even our customer base of the largest banks. And when I'm advocating, it's more than just idealism and theory.
Silvio: It's my lived existence as an African American immigrant to the United States. And that level of empathy, that level of understanding is real. And I'll tell you, it happens all the time. I'll be speaking to a member of Congress, I'll be speaking to a very senior regulator. I'll be speaking to a very senior banker, and they'll share with me, I've had my own problems with credit. Can you give me a few tips about how to improve my credit score? Or, I have this problem with student loans, right? Can you help me figure that out? That is the most common question I get asked. And because I have that empathy and I understand what it feels like to be deemed not credit worthy. And what people don't realize often is when you say to someone you're not credit worthy, the main thing they hear is you are not worthy. That ability to empathize with being labeled that way has been a really big driver of my career. And enabling people to come over that line and get back into the credit worthy category is very, very important to enable people to live their best life.
Hiten: Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing anchor. It's an amazing purpose. I still can't quite comprehend how a professor of economics at Harvard University can't be deemed as credit worthy, but I mean, we won't litigate the system from back then now. But what I'd love to do is just invite Cosimo to delve a bit deeper with you into the specific market and where things are at today. So Cosimo, if you want to pick things up with Silvio?
Cosimo: Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Hiten. And hi, Silvio, you talked a little bit about that in the introduction, but really, we would love to spend a little bit of time talking about how the market has evolved and particularly the role the VantageScore plays. I mean, someone who's not too familiar with that space might look at and say, well, there's still three major credit bureaus in the US, right? As you've said, a large portion of the US population is still underserved, but things are actually way more nuanced and interesting, including VantageScore and the role that it plays. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Silvio: Yeah, well, thank you, Cosimo, for raising that. When people think of credit scores and credit reports, they really think of three companies, TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. But the reality is that those companies primarily focus on one thing, which is collecting credit reports, which is that long list of credit accounts that consumers have had and whether they paid their debt obligations on time. But what we do is something different at VantageScore. We take all of that data in the credit report, and we produce through a proprietary algorithm, a three-digit score. It ranges from 300 on the low end, that’s a really low credit score, to 850 on the high end – that's a perfect credit score. So we take all of that data in your credit report, we process it through a proprietary algorithm, and in milliseconds, we produce that three-digit score, which is used by a bank or FinTech to assess the consumer's credit worthiness.
Silvio: So essentially, we are an algorithm company. Other companies that do what we do, they call themselves machine learning or even AI companies. But we've been doing it for over 15 years, and we take that data and we have been the innovator and leader in developing this three-digit score, which is really a shorthand to enable the end user to make that decision on whether to make a loan or not. And also, the terms associated with it. It was a huge innovation. We were not the first to do it. Our competitor, FICO was the first to do it. But what we were able to do is out-innovate them. We were the first, for example, to use alternative data in our credit score. We are still the first and only company to incorporate systematically rental payment data in all of our credit scores. We were the first to deliver a score for free to a consumer.
Silvio: Going back to my dad's example, when he immigrated, when we immigrated, there wasn't an easy way for a consumer to know what their credit score was, right? So you kind of were flying blind when you went to the bank to ask for a loan because you weren't sure what your credit score is. Well, VantageScore was the first to be delivered to a consumer for free so they could check their credit health before they applied for a loan. Recently, we were also the first credit score after the pandemic to exclude medical debt and medical collections. Two thirds of derogatory reports to consumer accounts, two thirds are related to medical collections. And what we found is they had actually very low, if any predictive value to our score. And so we were the first to exclude it. So I'm painting a few of the key innovations. We started after FICO, but we have out-innovated them through our technology and innovation always with an eye to being more predictive, always with an eye to being more inclusive.
Silvio: And that's what’s enabled us to win. Now, in terms of the industry dynamics, there is a big challenge because FICO was first, they were sort of hardwired into a lot of the evolving financial regulations that governed credit. Credit is a very regulated space and because they were first in this innovation of credit scoring, they were hardwired into a lot of the regulations. And the problem with that is it limited competition. And so particularly in the mortgage space, there was only one credit score that was allowed to be used related to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages. And of course, mortgages are the most important credit category. They're the largest credit product by total dollars lent. And so our ability not to compete, and that was a really big deal. And so we had a very long effort to get the regulator to allow us to compete because we are more innovative.
Silvio: We were successful. In my first year as CEO, which is about a little over two years ago. We were able to get the FHFA to allow us to compete in the mortgage space. And as a result, now, we've brought a huge amount of innovation to the mortgage space. We starting this year are going to be a mandated score for all mortgages mandated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And the impact of that is huge. Literally millions of consumers that previously didn't even have a score are not going to have their chance to get a government guaranteed mortgage for the first time. That is a huge, huge impact and generational in its impact because the reality is, I don't know if you guys know this, but the average equity, so the positive net worth value on a mortgage in America today is $248,000. And so giving people an opportunity to accumulate that level of wealth is generational in its impact. And so for the first time, we're being allowed to compete in that space in every other segment that we've been allowed to compete, whether it's credit cards, auto loans, personal loans, every one of those segments, when we're allowed to compete, we rapidly become the number one or number two credit score. And finally, we're having the opportunity to do that in mortgage. So competition is good, and we are ready, willing, and able to compete at Vantage Score, and we're doing that and winning.
Cosimo: Congratulations, by the way on that, Silvio, I know it's something you guys have been working for hard and for a while. So I want to go back to financial inclusion, such an important theme. And you've talked a little bit about alternative data. I don't know if everybody knows what we refer to that, but I know there's been a lot of effort to try to incorporate, for example, checking account data, transactional data into credit decisioning. Can you tell us a little bit where we are with that and what we should expect in the future?
Silvio: Right. Well, I think the context here is we live in the most measured period in human history. Every activity of mankind is now measured digitally. The time we wake up, what we eat, what we buy, where we travel to, even our emotions are scrupulously measured on things like social media. But yet, when it comes to credit decisions, the data that is being used to make that credit scoring decision is actually quite narrow. Historically, it's been almost entirely dependent on the consumer's credit report and the data that's contained therein. And there's a lot of good reasons for that, including regulation. You want to make decisions based on objective, predictive, high-quality data. You don't want to be making credit decisions based on data that is discriminatory, imprecise, inaccurate. But the reality is there are so many new additional data sets, some of which are very high quality, that we have to harness those new data sets to impact decisions, credit decisions.
Silvio: We call those additional data sets beyond the credit report alternative data. And so intuitively, you can think about all the different types of alternative data that they might be. I talked about some of them. Not all of them lend themselves to making an important decision like a lending decision, but some do. The principal one that we've been focused on more recently in terms of innovation is bank account data, right? Because bank account data is real financial data that's contained in a bank account or financial transaction. It's accurate, it's structured, it represents something real, which was an exchange of value. And so it has a lot of the qualities that you would expect from a credit report data. It's reliable, accurate, consistent. The problem is, historically it's been very private and most consumers don't want to share their bank account balance. Most consumers don't want to share what they spend their money on.
Silvio: In fact, it's so private sometimes even between a husband, wife, a married couple, they have separate accounts. They don't want the other person to see what they're spending money on. So that privacy and consent issue has been a big one. But what we found is especially over the last five years, consumers have been increasingly willing to share their bank account data with third parties for various types of purposes. Sometimes it's a money transfer, other times it's to share payment for a night out together at a nice restaurant. And so what we have developed advantage for is the ability for the consumer to grant their consent for their bank account data to be shared with their financial institution for the purpose of making a lending decision. And it turns out that the type of consumer who's most benefited by that ability to add the bank account data to a credit decision are actually those consumers who are traditionally underserved and are right at that cusp of being prime to near prime consumers.
Silvio: So it's exactly the segment that's growing very rapidly. It's exactly that segment that has traditionally been underserved. And so we pioneered that technology to enable a bank to systemically when they're making an underwriting decision, yes, they look at the consumer's credit score, but yes, they can also calculate a credit score adjustment based on what's in the consumer's bank account. We're actually piloting that with a number of the nation's largest banks right now. And the results that we're seeing are just phenomenal. It's going to revolutionize the way banks and FinTechs make lending decisions because you're getting real time data, accurate data and data that's showing how the consumer is behaving on a day basis through their bank account. We're super excited about it, and it's going to further our positioning as the nation's leading credit score.
Cosimo: And I guess, I mean that's fascinating. I think we're playing a little bit of a catch up here in the US versus other markets, but I think the broader move towards open banking should help with the likes of sharing customer data, right? So how is the industry reacting to that?
Silvio: Well, the industry is embracing it. I mean, I think the reality is that a lot of FinTechs already do this. So if you think about a company like Opportune or Credit Karma, a lot of those companies already enable the consumer to opt in their bank account. But what was missing is a way to do it systemically across the ecosystem and let every lender do it. And so we pioneered and patented a lot of that technology. And so doing this at scale is a really, really big deal. And look, I'll tell you one of the other things that's driving this innovation is that regulators are actually encouraging this, right? If you look at the statements from the FHFA, from the Treasury Department, from the OCC [Options Clearing Corporation], from the CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau], all of those regulators are really, really encouraging innovation around the use of alternative data because of the power that it delivers in terms of enhancing the quality of credit scores and credit decisions, but also enhancing the quality of inclusion, financial inclusion for consumers that have traditionally been underserved, but in fact credit worthy. So we're in a golden age of innovation right now in the credit scoring industry. We're really pleased at VantageScore to be in the vanguard of that innovation. And I think the result, in fact, I know the result is going to be a system which is more efficient, more predictive, but also importantly more inclusive to consumers that have traditionally been underserved, but in fact are very, very credit worthy and can be great profitable customers for banks and FinTechs.
Cosimo: That's great. Thank you, Silvio. Maybe, Hiten, I'll turn over back to you. I know you have some additional thoughts.
Hiten: Yeah, thanks, Cosimo. I'd go back to a bit more of your personal story, Silvio. We often invite guests to share a little bit about the things they've learned along their own journey that some of the listeners could benefit from. So I'd love you to reflect on if there's a particular challenge you've had to come or major learning you've had on your journey that you think could be relevant for the audience to hear and learn and benefit from.
Silvio: Well, I'm a data scientist and I became a data scientist before it was a term, right?
Hiten: Before it was cool. It's become very mainstream now, right?
Silvio: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And when it comes to data, particularly private data, including financial data, when companies start working with that type of data, one of the biggest concerns they have is use rights. Like are we allowed to use the data? Are we allowed to look at the data? And that prevents a lot of companies from innovating. They just can't get past that initial, are we allowed to use this data in this particular way? And one of the most surprising things that I've learned in my career is that when you can create value for multiple stakeholders in the use case for a particular data, virtually all stakeholders are willing to give you permission to use it. So instead of companies stopping at who owns the data, who has the right to use data. That, instead of doing that, instead companies should be thinking about how can I use this data to create value and insight for multiple stakeholders?
Silvio: If you get that answer, the answer to that question right - nothing is impossible. Because it is about how do you leverage the insights and data, leverage the insights for multiple stakeholders that you can create value. And I'll give you an example, just going back to the new innovation that we've created around financial data from bank accounts, there were a lot of stakeholders that were concerned about privacy. Can you use a consumer's bank account to make a credit decision and not violate their privacy? Well, you have to think about it. Well, if the consumer can get access to a loan that they wouldn't otherwise get by sharing their bank account, of course they're going to provide consent to accessing that data. If a bank can make an incremental good loan and have a better idea of the consumer's credit worthiness by using that bank account, of course they're going to make the bank account data to a third party so that they can access credit, assess credit worthiness.
Silvio: So a lot of innovation, particularly in the financial services market, really comes down to how can you build a value creation moment, a business model that benefits multiple stakeholders? And specifically, as it relates to data, the great insight I've had is you don't stop at the question who owns the data? You've got to move beyond that to how can you leverage the power of that data to create value from multiple stakeholders? And when companies do that, they just take off and grow. And I've been really blessed to have in my career the opportunity to do that and build business models like that and multiple companies including Visa and really scale it to billion-dollar businesses, same at First Aid, at Fiserv. And that's a big part of what we're doing now at VantageScore.
Hiten: Yeah, I think you hit on such an important issue there. At this point in time, the word that springs to mind for me is kind of trust. I think there's so much more now awareness around people's personal data, how is it being used? I think what you laid out there really compellingly is that, hey, if this is being done in a way that is beneficial to all, let's come together and do it. I think we're exiting a period where for whatever reason, there's been a lot of usage of that data in other applications and instances where people just didn't quite realize it was being used and for what benefits. I think you're onto a really important point, and I think there needs to be more storytelling like the one that you laid out which says, hey, broaden the usage rights here and we could do something that's useful to you here. I'm going to shift gears, Silvio, and one of the things I'd love to hear from guests is a little bit about what they do outside of the day job. And I’d love to hear if there's a hobby or an interest that you're actively involved in, and if it's something that actually helps feedback into what you do in the day job. I don’t know if there's anything there you'd want to share with the listeners.
Silvio: Well, one of my hobbies, I'm going to preface it by saying it's not what most people would consider a hobby, but I do it with that spirit of personal self-development. I actually serve on a number of boards of directors. And in that capacity, one of the things that you learn is that many large companies actually face similar problems and often across industries. It's something that the folks at Oliver Wyman know. In fact, most Oliver Wyman consultants probably learned that in the first week or two of training, the problems that you will solve as a management consultant actually manifest themselves across industries and across company sizes. But most business executives are really focused on delivering specific outcomes, and they see the world through the prism of their own company. And so one of the exciting things that I love about serving on public boards is being able to really see the same problem manifesting itself in a lot of different ways and being able to, again, propose solutions to those problems that are often custom tailored to that company, but might have actually come from another industry, another type of company, in a completely different context.
Silvio: And it's just very, very empowering to do that. To most people, boards of directors are this sort of opaque system of governance that most people don't get access to. Certainly very few people of color get access to, but yet they have a tremendous impact on companies, and employees, and ultimately consumers. And so it's a place where I really, really enjoy having an impact. It's an opportunity also for me to keep my sword sharp and continue to learn, but it's also an amazing place where you can see ideas, learn about ideas, but also contribute ideas that are going to have a huge impact. So I really, really enjoy serving on public company boards. I've been doing it now for over a decade, and it's been actually a really cool decade to be doing it, right? Because of the tremendous changes happening in corporate America, the changes that we're seeing in how people work as a result of the pandemic.
Silvio: And, of course, the amazing technological changes that are happening like AI, like every public company board right now is thinking, how do I develop an AI policy to harness both the power and limit the risks to my business of AI? Every public company is thinking about, okay, how do I re-engineer my employer value proposition to enable people to come together in person in the office, but also have the freedom sometimes to work remotely. Every company is thinking about that. Every company is thinking about, how do I actually do business more effectively through e-commerce channels in addition to, or sometimes in substitution of my in-person interactions? And so it is fascinating to be able to engage in those types of conversations at the board level across industries. I really, really love it, and I think a lot of people aspire to serve on a board of directors, and I would say that is a really great goal for any executive to have that opportunity to see it from the top.
Hiten: Yeah, no, that's wonderful to hear. And it's a great feedback loop that you outlined that's clearly very beneficial to all that you do. Final one from me, we love to invite guests to kind of throw and share the spotlight. So I don’t know if there's an individual, a company that's impressing you right now that you think deserves the benefit of the attention from a wider group. So I don’t know if there's anyone you'd like to call out or spotlight at this moment, Silvio.
Silvio: You know, there are two that are very different. People often think about business as the best business stories as a David versus a Goliath. And here in America, obviously it's a big part of American culture to root for David, the underdog. But I actually have two companies that I think about, one's a Goliath, one's a David, but they're both fascinating and I think should be studied and praised. So I'll start with the Goliath, which is Microsoft. Microsoft is a nearly $3 trillion market capitalization company. And what people don't realize is that as recently as a decade ago, people were wondering whether Microsoft was going to actually survive to its next incarnation. Bill Gates was stepping out as the founder and CEO, they had another CEO, and then they basically picked this kid who's an immigrant from India, and they said, is he going to actually be able to maintain Microsoft?
Silvio: And people were worried about maintaining, they weren't talking about, okay, tripling the market cap. And a decade ago there weren't many companies, I think I can think of maybe one which was Apple that had even hit the $1 trillion mark, right? And so the amazing thing about Microsoft and Satya Nadella is he was not only able to maintain but reinvent Microsoft to bring it to the next level. And that is just amazing for Microsoft, but it's even more amazing for an immigrant kid from India to be able to do that. And it shows the power, again, of America Incorporated, the power to integrate people from all over the world and give them an opportunity to really lift, not just their companies, but their communities and ultimately their country to a whole different level. It's really, really difficult to innovate at that level of scale. And Microsoft deserves a lot of praise, and Satya deserves a lot of praise for his innovation.
Silvio: Now let me pick a David, which is the company OpenAI, which is of course a very prominent partner to Microsoft. OpenAI was conceived with this really idealistic notion that this AI technology was different than all the other technologies in human history that had the power to fundamentally transform not just business, but the human experience. Since the 1920s and the second World War folks like Alan Turing, the father of modern artificial intelligence theory, they thought about the fact that machines could one day actually not just mimic humans, but actually exceed them. And here was a company that realized the moment was now, it's actually happening. And rather than sort of adopt a traditional form of company, they kind of toyed with this new governance structure where board of directors wasn't actually shareholders, where the developers were going to be this close-knit cabal of thinkers that came up with new ideas and they weren't going to bother with things like sales and marketing.
Silvio: They were just going to focus on the best algorithms. And I think about that model and how successful it's been. And I think about VantageScore because we're exactly the same. We're like this close-knit cabal of PhDs and data scientists. We've been doing it for a decade and a half, innovating new algorithms that fundamentally transform business and commerce. And I really think that that's going to be the model for the future. Companies increasingly are going to focus on the core value that they deliver. Increasingly, that core value will be around models, and algorithms, and how do you combine complex data sets to create new types of intelligence and data and insights. And so I think the companies of the future are going to look more like OpenAI and VantageScore and much less like what we think of as a traditional company. And it's a really, really important inflection point in corporate development and human history.
Silvio: I'm excited at what the future brings, but I think also, and we've done this very effectively at VantageScore, we also have to think about what kind of companies we want to be, what are the values that we want to be? Because for the first time in human history, AI technology has actually no limits. I want to say that again. AI technology has fundamentally no limits. The only limits that will exist are the ones that we impose. And if we don't think carefully about how we do that as a human race, we may be piercing ourselves with a thousand arrows. And so we really have to fundamentally think about, do we want our algorithms to make discriminatory credit decisions? I think most Americans would say no, determining someone's credit worthiness based on the color of their skin, or what their last name sounds like, or the zip code that that person lives in, that's contrary to our values, right?
Silvio: Using AI to dupe and fool people into voting for one candidate that they would not otherwise vote for, that's fundamentally off limits and we should prevent the technology from doing that. And so I think when I grew up going through the educational system, it was very odd to see somebody who had a degree in computer electrical engineering and MBA, and then also a law degree, because the question was how do those things all fit together? The future CEOs, and board members, and executives increasingly will have to have that multidisciplinary background because the issues that they will face will be not just technological issues, there'll be fundamental issues around law, and ethics, and public policy, and the business models that go along with that. So I'm excited, but it's going to be a much more complicated world, as you guys know at Oliver Wyman, and you guys are going to help us through it to make some good decisions and don't blow things up.
Hiten: Thank you. You paint a very interesting picture of the future, Silvio. And actually your point on the multidisciplinary or the return of the polymath as I've framed it from previous episodes, is something that keeps coming up again and again, right? The problems don't sit in traditional boundaries and traditional disciplines. So thank you for painting that compelling vision of what lies ahead. And thank you for your time on the show and taking us on the journey. It's been fascinating to follow what you experienced in childhood and how that shaped or motivated what you drive and deliver today. You wrestling with these big data sets and everything that it could become in the future. I think it's amazing what you've achieved and what you guys are driving, delivering, and it's been a real pleasure for you to have you on the show and share the story with us.
Silvio: Well, thank you, Hiten. Thank you, Cosimo. Thank you for having me on, and I'm looking forward to staying in good contact as we create this brave new world that we're all working in.
Hiten: Awesome. Cheers, Silvio. Thank you very much.
Cosimo: Thank you, cheers. Bye.
Silvio: Thank you. Bye.
