First Response Finance’s Athena project wins big at UK IT Industry Awards

At the 2025 UK IT Industry Awards, First Response Finance achieved a win in the Finance Project of the Year category for its Athena project. Designed to revolutionise credit risk assessment and streamline decision making, Athena combines machine learning, API-driven architecture and a dynamic rules engine to deliver faster, smarter outcomes for both customers and the business. Mike Cutts, Business Intelligence Team Leader at First Response Finance, explains the challenges that the project set out to address and what this award-winning project means for the future of digital financial services.

Please briefly introduce yourself.

I’m Mike Cutts, I head up the data team at First Response Finance, and I’ve been with the company for around 12 years. I started as a database administrator and was fortunate enough to move into a leadership role which led to building out our data science team. Once that team was fully established, we began work on the Athena project, an initiative that’s been in development for over four years now.

Moving on to the project itself, can you explain the financial services challenge that it was created to address?

We named the project Athena after the goddess of wisdom. It’s an end-to-end decision-making platform that includes an API, machine-learning models and a rules engine. Its purpose is to assess creditworthiness and risk for finance applications within our underwriting process.

Athena was designed to replace our legacy decision engine, which had become outdated. The old system relied on models trained on a population that no longer reflected our target market and used traditional statistical techniques rather than machine learning. The key challenges were improving credit risk assessment, accelerating time-to-market for changes, and achieving platform independence. Unlike the old system, Athena operates independently of our underwriting platform, laying the foundation for future decision making across the company.

What innovative approach or use of technology do you feel set this project apart from competitors?

Two things stand out. First, the close collaboration with our operational teams. A decision engine is only valuable if it fits seamlessly into business processes, and we worked hard to ensure that alignment.

Second, the technical innovation lies in the rules engine. We used a product called DecisionRules, developed by a Czech startup. It’s simple, user friendly, and allows rapid changes. Something that historically took weeks can now be done in days. Combined with industry-standard modelling tools like R and Python, this flexibility gives us a real competitive edge.

How will the project improve customer experience or trust in financial services?

Better risk categorisation is the key. It enables us to tailor business processes to the customer’s circumstances. For example, higher-risk applications follow a different route than lower-risk ones, ensuring a smoother experience for everyone. From a trust perspective, improved risk assessment means that we can offer products that are genuinely affordable for each customer. This alignment between product and customer circumstances builds confidence and strengthens trust in our services.

What are the measurable outcomes that demonstrate the success of the project?

The impact has been significant. Operationally, we’ve seen a 25% efficiency improvement in manual underwriting since Athena went live. Financially, the projected value for the first 12 months was £8 million which is a huge boost for First Response Finance. We’ve also seen a reduction in arrears on finance agreements, thanks to better targeting and affordability checks. And beyond those metrics, Athena has enabled faster change implementation. For example, when we identified a vulnerable age group in our portfolio, we adjusted the rules and deployed the change within days — a process that used to take weeks.

How did the team ensure compliance with regulatory and security standards during development?

Compliance was a priority from day one. Our models exclude sensitive data entirely, focusing only on credit risk factors. While we include age and gender — because they materially affect suitability — we avoid any data that could be considered sensitive under regulatory standards. This approach ensures both fairness and compliance throughout the decision-making process.

What lessons learned from this project can be applied to future financial innovations?

There have been many lessons. From a process perspective, we learned the importance of a robust working methodology. Initially, we were focused on ‘getting it over the line’, which led to inefficiencies. We’ve since adopted a more structured approach that improves visibility, predictability and collaboration. 

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On the technical side, testing protocols were a big takeaway. Misunderstood requirements forced us to backtrack on significant work, so we now prioritise comprehensive testing and clearer communication of requirements. Ultimately, Athena taught us that innovation isn’t just about technology, it’s about people, processes and adaptability. Those lessons will shape every future project we undertake.

Athena represents more than a technical upgrade — it’s a strategic transformation for First Response Finance. Combining machine learning, agile rules management and operational collaboration, the project has delivered measurable benefits for both the business and its customers. With lessons learned already influencing future initiatives, Athena is paving the way for smarter, more responsive financial services.

Finally, congratulations on winning Finance Project of the Year at the 2025 UK IT Industry Awards. What are your thoughts on the process and your experience of winning on the night?

Thank you! The awards process struck a great balance between independence and robustness. The submission was detailed and time consuming, but that’s what you’d expect from such a prestigious event. The peer interview stage was particularly valuable as it gave us confidence in the independence of the judging and raised questions we’d never considered internally.

On the night itself, we were shocked to win. We didn’t expect to be finalists, let alone take home the award, especially against major players like Nationwide, Lloyds Banking Group and the FCA. Seeing our Nottingham-based team come out on top was incredible. What made it even more rewarding was that we handled the submission ourselves, without the help of a PR agency, so the win really reflects the strength of the project and the team behind it.