National Fair Housing Alliance Tech Equity Initiative and FairPlay partner to improve mortgage lending
NFHA and FairPlay partner to test AI technologies aimed at improving mortgage lending outcomes for historically underserved groups
WASHINGTON, D.C. and LOS ANGELES — Feb. 28th, 2023 — The National Fair Housing Alliance, America’s only national civil rights organization dedicated solely to eliminating all forms of housing and lending discrimination and creating healthy, vibrant communities, and FairPlay, the world’s first Fairness-as-a-Service™ company, are announcing a partnership to test artificial intelligence (AI) methodologies designed to significantly improve mortgage lending outcomes for historically underserved homebuyers. Through the partnership, FairPlay will provide fairness methodologies to support NFHA’s Tech Equity Initiative for the second consecutive year. NFHA’s Tech Equity Initiative is a multi-pronged effort designed to eliminate bias and discrimination in algorithmic systems including statistical models, machine learning systems and AI systems.
Together NFHA and FairPlay will test AI fairness technologies designed to more accurately risk-rank consumers from historically underserved groups. NFHA will disseminate the findings of this AI fairness initiative at conferences and through publications over the course of 2023. NFHA will also use its state-of-the-art PPM (Purpose, Process and Monitoring) framework to evaluate the algorithms produced as part of this partnership for inclusion in its algorithmic fairness toolkit.
“As we celebrate the 55th year of the Fair Housing Act, we’re excited to partner with FairPlay for a second year to leverage AI fairness techniques in ways that will create better outcomes for people of color in the mortgage market,” said NFHA’s Chief Tech Equity Officer, Dr. Michael Akinwumi. “Since being launched in 2021, NFHA’s Tech Equity team has worked with partners like FairPlay to create more fairness for underserved groups, including people of color and women.”
“NFHA has been working to increase the fairness of algorithmic decisioning systems since the 1990s,” said FairPlay CEO Kareem Saleh. “We are delighted to continue our partnership with NHFA to leverage our Fairness-as-a-Service technologies in ways that are good for people, good for profits and good for progress.”
The NFHA-FairPlay AI fairness work will take place throughout 2023.
For more information about NFHA, visit NationalFairHousing.org. For more information about FairPlay, visit FairPlay.ai.
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The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) is the country’s only national civil rights organization dedicated solely to eliminating all forms of housing and lending discrimination and ensuring equal opportunities for all people. Through its homeownership, credit access, tech equity, education, member services, public policy, community development, and enforcement initiatives, NFHA works to dismantle longstanding barriers to equity and build diverse, inclusive, well-resourced communities.
FairPlay AI is the world’s first Fairness-as-a-Service™ company. FairPlay technologies help users of AI systems detect and combat algorithmic bias in ways that drive growth and enhance positive outcomes — without increasing risk. Companies, nonprofits and regulators use FairPlay’s APIs to provide “double checks” of algorithmic decisions using models tuned to be more sensitive to historically disadvantaged groups. By correcting for blind spots in models and data, FairPlay facilitates decisions that are more profitable and more fair. For more information about FairPlay and its products, visit FairPlay.ai.
Media Contacts:
Hela Sheth
678-938-1318
hela@katalystcomms.com
Izzy Woodruff
Iwoodruff@nationalfairhousing.org