Since retiring in 2020 from a 25-year career as a Big 4 analytics / AI consulting leader for the financial services industry, Ric now provides strategic assistance to clients facing challenging risk and compliance issues associated with their consumer lending operations - including AI / ML credit model development, model risk management and explainability, fair lending analytics, and algorithmic fairness.

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Ric's ability to provide senior-level perspectives and insights in deeply technical areas, his ability to communicate effectively between technical and non-technical personnel such as model owners and legal/compliance, and his ability to simplify technical topics for key internal and external stakeholders, are core differentiators for when you need an advisor for high-stakes matters involving your company's advanced analytical loan origination tools - whether developed in-house or obtained from third-party vendors or fintech partners.   

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In addition to his advisory services, Ric freely shares his perspectives on these topics in his AI LendScape Blog and eBooks where he dives into current industry and regulatory developments - such as the credit, model, and compliance risks of AI/ML-based credit scoring models, the risk and compliance challenges of algorithmic fairness technologies, the regulatory pressures on bank-fintech partnerships, and the hidden biases in popular race/ethnicity proxy approaches used for fair lending testing.

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Ric's insights and advice are based on his twenty-five years of experience assisting US banks and consumer lenders of all sizes in complying with regulatory-driven requirements and expectations around the use of complex analytics throughout their organizations - most frequently in the area of consumer lending. 

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• On the compliance side, Ric has been an industry leader in the application of data-driven analytical methods to identify potential disparate treatment and disparate impact risks in loan pricing, credit decisioning, redlining, marketing, and product selection – including identification and remediation of algorithmic bias in decision models. Ric has also aided his clients in responding to federal- and state-level fair lending investigations and enforcement actions – including matters before the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Board, and the NY Department of Financial Services.

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• On the safety and soundness side, Ric has worked with numerous banks throughout his career - including 8 of the top 10 banks - to perform model validation testing on high-risk models and model applications, as well as to evaluate the design and operating effectiveness of first, second, and third line of defense model risk management functions.   

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Ric earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Rochester and a B.S. in Finance and Economics, summa cum laude, from the State University of New York College at Oswego.