Ben Jennings is an Analytics & Data Science nerd with over 15 years’ experience defining Credit Risk and Lending strategies at the Nation’s largest Credit Unions. His passion lies in adapting the latest techniques in Advanced Analytics to develop innovative solutions for both routine and novel challenges faced by lenders. Ben most recently oversaw 1st Line Credit Risk, Product Strategy & Loan Pricing on a $12 Billion Consumer Loan portfolio before joining Mark III where he will continue to serve the Credit Union & Banking communities. Ben holds a Master’s in Economics from the University of Delaware with a focus on Econometrics, the closest degree to Data Science available at the time. He also holds a Bachelor’s in Business Administration with an Economics Track from Salisbury University, where he received the NCAA Student-Athlete Academic Achievement Award for excelling in both academics and athletics. As an active participant in the Analytics community, Ben has shared his insights at prominent conferences, including presenting on “Advanced Analytics and Decisioning: Progressive strategies for operationalizing AI/ML models” at the Experian Vision Conference and discussing the “State of Consumer Lending Industry” at the Regional Bank Advisory Council.During his tenure overseeing Credit Risk, Ben achieved significant milestones, including reducing Third-Party Auto Refi risk by 30%, developing a custom loan decision model, crafting the corporate loss forecast model, and serving as the corporate SME for the OpenLending Insured Auto partnership. He also led the financial and risk assessment of new business opportunities, generating over $600 million in monthly origination volume. While leading Product Strategy, Ben evolved consumer loan pricing from a rudimentary single-price-fits-all model, to a cash-flow based model calculating over 3,000 loan prices differentiated by product type, channel, geographical regions, and product structure. He created an automated competitive intelligence system using Natural Language Processing, web-scraping and 3rd party data to automatically identify and summarize competitor’s price or program changes. Outside of work, Ben loves to be with his family, coaching his kids in Baseball, Basketball, and Hockey. He wakes up early to train for Triathlons, even though he hasn’t done one in years.