An enabler of innovation, Tim Grace, is an entrepreneur who has founded and grown multiple companies. Across the global payment card, mortgage and automotive finance industries, he has led the development of several game-changing solutions – one of which achieved a worldwide market share of more than 60%.
Tim is currently CEO of PointPredictive Inc., an innovative predictive analytics company focusing on risk management and fraud prevention in the automotive finance, consumer lending, and mortgage lending industries. Tim began his career as an industrial engineer in the aerospace industry, followed by ten years at HNC Software/FICO where he honed his skills for understanding a market and solving industry-wide challenges using advanced analytic scoring technology. During his tenure at HNC, he realized the numerous opportunities for building and implementing predictive fraud and loss prevention solutions.
In the world of risk management, Tim intuitively identifies inefficiencies in the credit application process (as well as in risk and fraud management processes) that result in financial institutions losing millions in revenue due to defaulted loans. By applying predictive analytics technology to these processes, he has become a pioneer in helping lenders prevent unnecessary losses.
Invincible Entrepreneurial Spirit
Tim finds inspiration from innovators, his family, and most importantly his adopted son, who has overcome difficult childhood challenges. Tim’s credo is to work hard and never give up, and to thrive while overcoming the challenges endured along the way. Through hard work, grit and determination, he believes adversity can turn into great triumph.
Since launching PointPredictive in 2014, the most significant challenge Tim faced was educating automotive lenders that they were suffering significant financial losses due to fraud and misrepresentation, and that the problem was large enough to warrant their attention. To overcome this challenge, PointPredictive data scientists used millions of lender-provided data points that proved automotive application fraud was hiding in early payment defaults. As a result, PointPredictive was the first to sound the bell that auto lending fraud had escalated from $4 billion in losses in 2016 to $6 billion in losses in 2018. It was then the first to launch predictive analytics scoring solutions that have the potential to cut those losses in half without affecting a lender’s operational productivity.
This challenge led to one of PointPredictive’s biggest triumphs to date. In an industry-wide collaborative effort to combat fraud, many of the industry’s biggest lenders joined the PointPredictive Automotive Fraud Consortium to share best practices. Many customers and partners are adopting the company’s technology, and PointPredictive has become an inspiring, disruptive technology company.
PointPredictive: The Solutions for Automotive Lending Fraud
PointPredictive emerged in the auto finance industry during a time when lenders were facing many of the same warning signs that led to the mortgage industry meltdown ten years ago. PointPredictive develops solutions and services that help automotive lenders leverage machine learning and predictive analytics to improve the profitability of their loans. Its solutions include Auto Fraud Manager, Synthetic Identity Alert™ and Income Validation Alert. These technology solutions proactively identify and score loan applications for fraud and misrepresentation that could lead to financial loss.
Auto Fraud Manager is the company’s flagship product that can identify more than a dozen different types of fraud in a loan application. Moreover, income fraud and synthetic identity fraud are currently top-of-mind concerns for customers in the automotive, mortgage and consumer lending business and PointPredictive has built solutions to specifically address these fraud types across the lending spectrum.
Customer-Oriented Culture
Engagement and trust are cornerstones that Tim instills within PointPredictive’s culture. Team collaboration and communication are designed to get everyone involved and engaged. In company-wide meetings, everyone can look each other in the eye and talk about what’s important. Tim actively participates in conversations about product innovation, customer implementations, customer business problems, and customer needs.
Customer service, accuracy, privacy, and trust are integrated into everything the company does and every conversation PointPredictive team members have. Customers share their most sensitive data with PointPredictive and rely on the team to care for that data to improve their business.
Outrageous Goals Lead to Success
Tim considers his team as his ‘best asset’ for achieving corporate goals and is leading them to ensure PointPredictive solutions become the ‘best in class’ standard for the industry. His approach for achieving this standard is through his tried-and-true mantra of success: set outrageous goals and assemble a great team to over-deliver on them.
PointPredictive’s talented team is comprised of industry-leading scientists, business experts and technology gurus. Tim told us, “I’m fortunate to work with people who are already great at what they do, so my goal is to provide an enhanced context to help them think ‘big picture’ about what we’re working on and help them ask better questions.”
Encouraging Future Leaders
Tim is intent on bringing the next generation of innovators forward. Tim and his colleagues acknowledge there is a need for new leaders in predictive analytics to continue the charge against fraud and misrepresentation. He is actively seeking the next generation of technology and business leaders, putting them in positions for learning and success, and mentoring them to achieve great things in the machine learning and predictive analytics space going forward.
His Advice to Budding Entrepreneurs
“Learn everything you can from everyone you can. Some of the greatest advice I received came from conversations with people who had done it before. I also advise entrepreneurs to always start with listening to their customers (and potential customers). Understand their business problem and then move to designing solutions. With deep customer engagement, your chances of success grow exponentially.”