Open Lending has another reason to celebrate this holiday season.

The enablement and risk analytics solutions provider for financial institutions announced this week that it has been selected as a winner of the 2023 NAFCU Innovation Award for its enhanced Lenders Protection scorecard.

Open Lending said the awards program recognizes companies making the most valuable and innovative contributions to credit union success, including groundbreaking advancements in technology and software.

“We are thrilled to have our enhanced Lenders Protection tool acknowledged as an impactful solution for supporting credit unions in the tumultuous automotive lending industry,” said Kevin Filan, senior vice president of marketing at Open Lending, in a news release. “After being nominated as a finalist of the Credit Union Times LUMINARIES awards and forming a new partnership with CUNA, this award is the latest accolade in our mission to empower financial institutions in serving the underserved.

“As many lower credit and new-to-credit individuals are mistakenly viewed as too risky, the additional alternative data attributes more accurately determine borrower risk to allow many more Americans to build their financial well-being while fostering long-term loyalty with their financial institution,” Filan continued.

Since its inception in 2000, Open Lending has facilitated more than 900,000 installment contracts valued in excess of $21 billion.

By harnessing more than 20 years of proprietary and third-party data through TransUnion and LexisNexis, Lenders Protection can assess the probability of prepays, defaults, and default severity to produce a more accurate risk score and competitive pricing backed by default insurance.

“This cutting-edge AI tool helps provide attainable loans to deserving borrowers who are often overlooked by traditional credit score models,” Open Lending said.