EP 44: Human-Centered Credit - Building Explainable AI for Lending in an Agentic World

We are letting AI make life-changing financial decisions without requiring it to explain itself. The CFPB says 'insufficient information' is no longer an acceptable reason to deny a loan. The EU AI Act classifies credit scoring as high-risk. And more than half the US workforce - gig workers, fractional leaders, solopreneurs - is still scored by models built for a 1950s economy. Tamara Laine is the Founder and CEO of MPWR AI and an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist turned fintech executive. Her reporting on ethical AI at Amazon and Northrop Grumman earned her an Emmy. Her work at MPWR - building explainable, policy-bound AI for the lending lifecycle - has earned her a seat in the Fintech Sandbox. IN THIS EPISODE: ▪  How Tamara's path from ballet to journalism to fintech all follows the same thread: spot a problem, find the expertise to solve it, create change ▪  Why half the US workforce is now a gig worker, creator, Gen Z worker, or thin-filed borrower - and why FICO models were never built to see them fairly ▪  What MPWR AI actually does: six policy-bound agents across the full loan lifecycle, pulling hundreds of data points to help lenders say yes more often ▪  The core architectural principle: AI does the work, deterministic models make the decisions - because LLMs can be biased and engineered to produce answers that are simply not true ▪  The two-button audit system: a decision audit and a bias audit, immediately available to any compliance team ▪  Patent-pending architecture: agents operate in defined information buckets — if the information isn't there, the system cannot answer and cannot hallucinate ▪  How MPWR measures whether it's actually expanding access: higher acquisition rates, lower defaults, reduced manual work - all benchmarked against lenders' own historical denial data ▪  Tamara's advice to gig workers and fractional leaders: solutions are emerging - advocate for yourself and ask your bank how they serve the modern workforce. FIND TAMARA LAINE: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamaralaine/ (DMs always answered) MPWR AI: https://www.mpwrai.com/ DATASCIENCEWITHSAM: If you work in fintech, lending, or AI governance, this is the episode to send to your compliance team. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Podbean, and YouTube. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your network. DataScienceWithSam is always looking for new guests - if you have a topic you'd like to discuss on a 30–45 minute podcast, feel free to reach out.