Describe a situation where you had to influence someone, perhaps a senior stakeholder or a peer, to adopt a new idea or change their approach. How did you persuade them?

Situation

As a senior analyst in a local bank, I noticed that our credit evaluation process for SME loans was heavily manual, resulting in a 10-day turnaround that caused us to lose potential clients to more agile fintech lenders.

Task

I needed to convince the chief risk officer to adopt a semi-automated scoring model using alternative data, despite his deep attachment to traditional judgment-based underwriting.

Action

Instead of presenting a theoretical proposal, I ran a pilot on a backlog of 200 past applications using a simple regression model I built in Excel, pulling in mobile wallet transaction data as an additional input. The pilot showed a 25% reduction in default prediction error without increasing portfolio risk. I then scheduled a one-on-one meeting with the CRO, framed the conversation around his known priority, maintaining asset quality, and demonstrated how the model could augment his team's expertise rather than replace it. I also invited a respected fintech partner to share how similar models had worked in comparable markets.

Result

The CRO approved a six-month trial for a new blended scorecard. Within the trial period, turnaround time dropped to 3 days, application volume increased by 40%, and the non-performing loan rate actually improved by 2 basis points. The project was later scaled to the entire SME segment.