History of Zoot Enterprises

Zoot Enterprises was formed in 1990, when founder Chris Nelson recognized a need in the financial industry for products that could access multiple credit bureaus' information and allow for easily customized reporting. Zoot's first product was a standalone credit reporting application. This product provided a dial-up connection to each of the bureaus and a standardized approach to viewing and reporting on the data.

Financial services and credit card processing leaders adopted Zoot technology to improve their performance and reduce the cost of credit analysis. Nelson quickly added decisioning and analysis capabilities and was able to offer automated credit decisioning at a reasonable cost.

Zoot's second-generation product, the SPOC® decision engine, was built as a software as a service application or SaaS. The SaaS model enables clients to enjoy the advantages of a reliable hosted environment while maintaining complete control over their solution. They can control their applications, modify business rules and logic flows, and even move code to production without programmer assistance. Zoot manages the interface between clients and all information sources, including access to multiple credit bureaus and alternative data providers with a single vendor network connection.

In 1997, Zoot began offering web applications. Zoot developed America's first Internet-based home equity application. Since then, we've created credit application and loan processing websites for dozens of financial institutions. In most cases, the consumer never realizes that when they click "Apply Now," they are connecting to Zoot's data center to complete their loan form. An additional offering is a set of internally developed rapid development tools that make creating web applications as easy as we've made creating credit decisioning.

In response to the volatile market and changing consumer behaviors that plagued the financial industry from 2007-2009, Zoot created the credit risk lab. The lab allows business users to rapidly develop, test, evaluate, and implement credit attributes and scorecards in order to keep credit policy current and accurate as industry conditions change. This highly innovative solution enables lenders to meet compliance regulations and serve customers well while continuing to generate sustainable revenue growth.

In order to help financial institutions move forward more profitably in the new financial landscape, Zoot co-created the zOptimize multichannel cross-sell solution. zOptimize garnered Zoot another industry award for its ability to enhance the customer's experience, unify sales and marketing efforts, integrate predictive modeling, and bridge frontend and backend processes.

The company that started in Nelson's basement has now grown exponentially. Rapid growth prompted the company to build an $18 million headquarters building in 2001. What continues to differentiate Zoot are our tools and services approach, which allows financial institutions to configure solutions to exactly meet their needs, and our dedicated workforce, whose experience and expertise have supported long-term relationships with 3 of the top 5 U.S. banks.

	Zoot Timeline
	1990	Chris Nelson forms Zoot Enterprises in the basement of his home in Bozeman, Mont. Zoot's first clients are CUNA and a top 3 credit card company PC-based credit retrieval is created
	1991	First instant loan by phone
	1992	Zoot conducts first prescreen-of-one for Spiegel Catalog. Zoot hires first employee (besides Chris): Warren Bauder First instant auto approval on credit cards
	1994	First automated instant prescreen-of-one
	1995	Zoot develops first distributed decision engine: the SPOC® decision engine.
	1997	Zoot Banking Systems begins offering web applications Zoot conducts the first online realtime decisioning home equity application in the United States
	1998	Zoot onsite Tech Support hours expands past business hours First online realtime HELOC decision
	1999	First client GUI rules manager release
	2000	Zoot regularly exceeds one million transactions in a month First deployment of enterprise decisioning framework
	2001	Zoot launches the Kairos™ loan origination system. Zoot reaches 100 employees.
	2002	Zoot moves into their 150,000 sq ft headquarters building located in Bozeman, Mont. Zoot hosts their first Financial Conference for the financial industry. Zoot releases SPOC Version 3. First client-side GUI to control in SaaS decision engine
	2003	First automated credit file modification & testing tool
	2004	DaimlerChrysler Services selects Zoot for their captive lending decisioning Zoot releases the IQ Workflow™ engine, the Diakon™ test file modification tool, the Web-AI™ realtime interface, and the Zoot Credit Characteristics™ library Washington Mutual selects Zoot for their mortgage decisioning
	2005	Industry veteran Dennis Dixon is hired as new president Tech Support expands to twenty-four hours Zoot regularly exceeds ten million transactions in a month First comprehensive attribute editing & creation GUI
	2006	Zoot deploys national sales force Top 5 bank holding company selects Zoot for re-entry into the credit card market Zoot Enterprises processes over 200 million transactions from January to December Zoot successfully completes SAS-70 certification First successful enterprise cross-sell framework
	2007	Zoot ranked number 1 on Bank Technology News' top 10 tech companies to watch.
	2008	Zoot was named the 2008 Business of the Year by Prospera Business Network During the past five years, the company has averaged 99.99 percent uptime in its core environment, reaching 99.996 in 2008. Zoot is SAS-70 Type 1 and Type 2 compliant Zoot maintained PCI certification in 2008 in response to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
	2009	Zoot activated third data center (Tier 4) in Salt Lake City, Utah Zoot was named a Hot Banking Technology Company to Watch in 2009 by Forrester Research, Inc. Four patents pending (Kairos, ZUI, Diakon, and Enterprise Cross-sell) Zoot introduces zEnvisionSM Credit Risk Lab Zoot earns a 2010 Innovator Award for the zOptimize multichannel cross sell solution from Bank Technology News.