Business rules engines (BRE) are used to make automated decisions within financial institutions (FIs) more effective and efficient. They facilitate the processes of consumer data analysis and house the financial institution’s business logic. Robust BREs can augment existing legacy systems to improve ineffective processes, while leaving the effective steps in place. Best-in-class solutions also have realtime capabilities, allowing FIs to decision consumers at the point of interaction. Streamlining decisioning processes increases accuracy and consistency of decisions made as well as the overall number of applications that can be processed.

Consumer data can be decisioned in a business rules engine through the business logic. This is a set of rules unique to each FI and is essentially their “special sauce”. Based on their set of criteria, banks have different scoring models for consumer data, which results in different terms and conditions of products for consumers. Within the business logic, attributes, scorecards, and matrices can all be calculated to determine product details for each consumer. Because the same logic is used for all applications, decisioning is accurate and consistent across the enterprise.

Top-of-the-line business rules engines can be used to replace inefficient parts of existing legacy infrastructures. Rather than “ripping and replacing” an entire system, banks can reroute applications to an external BRE that will perform a predefined set of tasks, then return consumer applications back to the existing legacy system. This lets banks keep the elements of their process that still work, but replace those that hinder the rest of the process.