
Perspectives
AI in Equipment and Auto Finance
Part 3: Moving Forward with Machine Learning

Produced in association with Alfa iQ, Moving Forward with Machine Learning is Alfa's third and final paper on artificial intelligence in the asset finance industry. It combines the theoretical insights from our position paper Balancing Risk and Reward with the use cases explored in our technical paper Using Machine Learning in the Wild.
Moving Forward explores the trajectory of machine learning, its uses in auto and equipment finance, and how ML will continue to advance in the near future. There follows an in-depth exploration of federated learning, and how organisations can use private data to train ML models without ever compromising the privacy of that data.
Federated learning aims to bring the "learning" part of the process to the data owner, avoiding the need to transfer any private data.
Achieving federated learning through differential privacy. Using Alfa Systems data as an example, the diagram below shows how multiple data owners can contribute to the training of a single ML model, without sharing data.

Achieving federated learning through differential privacy
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An initial ML model is deployed in the same environment as Alfa Systems, alongside an ML application.
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Alfa Systems APIs are invoked to extract the data on which to train the ML model.
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Random “noise” is added to the updates before sending them outside the environment's network.
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The update is sent to an impartial third party.
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The updated ML model is redistributed to the data owners.
A partnership between Alfa and Bitfount, Alfa iQ was established to deliver intelligence to the world’s auto and equipment finance providers, with a mission to make access to assets efficient, intelligent and fair.
Alfa iQ will provide industry-leading direction in the use of ML. The partnership brings together Alfa’s industry experience and asset finance data models, with Bitfount’s expert AI data scientists and federated learning platform. Its ambition is to provide the best machine learning models and advanced decisioning scorecards for the asset finance industry.
Alfa iQ: The intelligence platform for asset finance. Learn more and stay updated at alfaiq.com.
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AI in Equipment and Auto Finance Part 3: Moving Forward with Machine Learning
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01/07/2021