Brazil's leading private bank has won a 2026 FICO® Decision Award for Decision Management Innovation

FICO (NYSE:FICO):

Banco Bradesco S.A., one of Brazil's largest private banks, has scaled daily payroll lending from 8 to 700+, more than 100 times, by leveraging the advanced capabilities of the FICO® Platform.

By adopting a data-driven and automated decisioning approach, Bradesco grew its payroll lending operations at an exceptional pace, achieving triple-digit growth in daily production while maintaining high levels of precision, risk control, and regulatory compliance.

This transformation enabled the bank to multiply its cumulative loan portfolio more than 30 times, while simultaneously expanding access to credit and accelerating its digital transformation agenda across retail banking.

For its outstanding results and innovation in decision management, Bradesco was recognized with the 2026 FICO® Decision Award.

Bradesco modernized its payroll-deductible loan offering by deploying a cloud-native eligibility engine built on the FICO® Platform. The solution acts as an intelligent decision orchestrator, integrating real-time data via APIs from government sources such as eSocial, Dataprev, and Digital CTPS with Bradesco's customer and risk data to automatically validate employment status and eligibility for CLT workers within seconds, supporting scalable, resilient, and real-time processing.

More information: https://www.fico.com/en/fico-platform

"This modernization allowed us to move to a fully digital, end-to-end automated model," said Wallace Jagiello, BU CIO for lending at Banco Bradesco. "With intelligent decisioning at the core, we are able to deliver faster, more accurate, and safer loan offers at scale, expanding access to payroll-deductible credit for millions of formally employed workers across Brazil."

Navigating Brazil's Digital Payroll Revolution

In 2025, the Brazilian government expanded its payroll lending model through the Dataprev Digital Payroll Loan Marketplace, accessed via eSocial and CTPS Digital. This reform introduced a centralized digital environment where multiple financial institutions compete to offer eligible workers the best loan terms within 24 hours, opening access to competitive credit for 45–50 million formal-sector workers.

Building Intelligent Decision Orchestration

At the heart of Bradesco's solution is a dual-assessment model that evaluates both employee and employer to mitigate risk and improve portfolio quality. The sophisticated engine dynamically evaluates loan eligibility by analyzing income, credit history, payroll deduction limits, employer relationships, and risk profiles powered by FICO's advanced analytics and adaptive policy framework.

The cloud-native architecture enables sub-minute processing times from customer simulation to offer generation, giving Bradesco a powerful advantage in Brazil's highly competitive marketplace where institutions have up to 24 hours to respond. The platform handles exponential growth while delivering full compliance and maintaining decision quality through a modular, cloud-based, scalable architecture and multi-variable real-time intelligence.

"This technological transformation delivered extraordinary scale while democratizing access to fair and affordable credit," said Kleber Firmo Fernandes, executive superintendent for payroll at Banco Bradesco. "We expanded financial inclusion by moving beyond legacy payroll-linked offers to reach all account holders, and today payroll-deductible loans account for 22% of Bradesco's individual loan portfolio, offering millions of formal-sector workers a sustainable path into Brazil's financial ecosystem."

"Bradesco cracked the code on something most banks struggle with: making regulatory compliance a competitive advantage," said Nikhil Behl, president, software at FICO. "Most banks see new government mandates as compliance headaches, but Bradesco saw Brazil's eSocial framework as their ticket to reach 50 million workers who were previously off-limits. That's the mindset that separates market leaders from market followers."

"Bradesco didn't just adapt to Brazil's new payroll lending rules, they capitalized on them," said Courtney Haan, strategic produce manager for fraud products, Velera (Previous Winner) and one of the FICO Decision Awards judges. "Going from 8 to 700 daily contracts in Brazil's hyper-competitive market shows what happens when you build technology that thrives on complexity rather than just surviving it."

About Bradesco

Banco Bradesco is one of Brazil's largest and most respected financial institutions, serving over 74 million customers. The bank is at the forefront of digital banking, utilizing cutting-edge technology to enhance customer experience and financial security. Bradesco is committed to financial inclusion, innovation, and sustainable development, ensuring seamless and secure banking for individuals and businesses across Brazil.

About the FICO® Decision Awards

The FICO Decision Awards recognize organizations that are achieving remarkable success using FICO solutions. A panel of independent judges with deep industry expertise evaluates nominations based upon measurable improvement in key metrics; demonstrated use of best practices; project scale, depth and breadth; and innovative uses of technology. The 2026 judges are:

Sam Abadir, research director, risk & compliance, IDC Financial Insights
Shrimanth Adla, senior director, credit risk strategy and analytics, Comcast
Manoj Agrawal, group editor, Banking Frontiers
Courtney Haan, strategic payments experience manager, Velera (Previous Winner)
Shelly Kramer, principal analyst at Kramer & Company and theCube Research
Andy Lawrie, credit risk tech lead at Nationwide Building Society (Previous Winner)
Lisa Morgan, technology journalist and contributor at InformationWeek
Déborah Oliveira, founder and editor-in-chief at IT Forum

The winners of the FICO Decision Awards will be spotlighted at and win tickets to FICO® World 2026, May 19-22, 2026, at the Signia By Hilton hotel, Orlando, Florida.

About FICO

FICO (NYSE:FICO) powers decisions that help people and businesses around the world prosper. Founded in 1956, the company is a pioneer in the use of predictive analytics and data science to improve operational decisions. FICO holds more than 200 US and foreign patents on technologies that increase profitability, customer satisfaction and growth for businesses in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, health care, retail and many other industries. Using FICO solutions, businesses in more than 80 countries do everything from protecting 4 billion payment cards from fraud, to improving financial inclusion, to increasing supply chain resiliency. The FICO® Score, used by 90% of top US lenders, is the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the US and has been made available in over 40 other countries, improving risk management, credit access and transparency.

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View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260519062392/en/

Neil Mirano

RICE for FICO

+65 3157 5680

neil.mirano@ricecomms.com

Thais Sabatini

FICO

+55 11 991839657

thaissabatini@fico.com

Bradesco Expands Payroll Loan Operations with FICO Platform