Worth launches real-time decisions for small firms

Worth has launched Decision Intelligence for financial institutions processing small business applications. The system delivers real-time decisions on completed applications.

The product targets credit cards, merchant accounts, bank accounts, and loans, where banks can take 30 to 60 days to decide on a completed business application, according to Federal Reserve small business lending data cited by Worth.

Worth is positioning the product as a way to address delays that often stem from administrative checks rather than the underlying lending or account decision. Those delays can include reconciling discrepancies between tax filings, bank statements and state registrations, along with repeated document requests and manual data entry across multiple systems.

The system uses Worth's database of more than 350 million verified business identities and what it calls Crosswalking Technology to verify ownership structures, related entities and state filings before credit models or fraud checks begin. It can also source missing information on the institution's behalf and automatically feed it into the decision process.

That marks a shift from systems that provide analysis or recommendations but still rely on an underwriter to complete the decision. Worth says its platform applies an institution's underwriting policies check by check and records the reason for every result against the policy version in force at the time.

For banks and lenders, the immediate commercial issue is speed. Small businesses seeking finance or account approval often depend on quick decisions to cover payroll, buy materials or replenish stock. Financial institutions, meanwhile, are under pressure to process applications without increasing headcount or weakening controls.

Decision Intelligence is designed to remove manual review queues for applications that have already been completed and verified. In practice, that means underwriters would spend less time resolving identity mismatches or chasing missing data, and more time on cases that require judgment or escalation.

Alongside the launch, Worth has introduced CODI, a conversational platform agent whose name stands for Continuous Decision Intelligence. Underwriters can use the tool to ask why a case received a particular score, what documents are missing or what has changed on a monitored account, and receive what Worth describes as a traceable answer.

Sal Rehmetullah, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Worth, said the product was built to address a problem the founders had experienced directly.

"We started Worth because we lived this problem ourselves. Even when small business owners are creditworthy, the system can't always see that clearly. Decision Intelligence gives our partners the data to move faster and the accuracy to decide better. When you reduce the noise in the decision, more capital flows to the businesses that should have had it all along and institutions that are looking to serve them," Rehmetullah said.

After approval

Worth says the system is intended to continue operating after an application has been approved. It monitors live portfolios and re-underwrites a business when key facts change, rather than waiting for an annual review cycle.

Examples include a lapsed registration, a change in ownership, a processing profile that diverges from the one originally approved, or the appearance of a new adverse signal. In those cases, the account is checked again against the policy that governed the original approval, then either cleared or escalated with the associated reasoning attached.

This places the product within a broader trend across financial services, where firms are trying to automate more of the compliance and underwriting workflow while maintaining audit trails. The sector has adopted machine learning and generative AI tools in areas such as fraud detection, onboarding and customer support, but the final underwriting step has often remained with human reviewers.

Worth argues that its product goes beyond recommendation tools because it takes action within predefined rules rather than simply passing a scored file to an employee. It also says each agent operates within defined guardrails and that each decision remains auditable.

Jacques Fu, Co-Founder and Chief AI Officer at Worth, said the system was intended to improve both throughput and oversight.

"Decision Intelligence lets institutions make more accurate decisions faster, approving more of the right businesses and pulling revenue forward, while every agent stays inside defined guardrails, and every decision is auditable. It makes underwriting teams stronger and more equipped to scale approvals alongside this growing volume without sacrificing decision quality. Nothing like this has existed before, and it's going to change how small businesses and financial services operate forever," Fu said.

Worth says it serves financial institutions, independent software vendors, fintechs and payment providers, and that its business database covers more than 200 countries and territories.