Patrice Alexander Ficklin

Patrice Alexander Ficklin

founding Director of the Office of Fair Lending & Equal Opportunity

Patrice Alexander Ficklin is the founding director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Fair Lending & Equal Opportunity, which leads the CFPB’s efforts to ensure fair, equitable, and nondiscriminatory access to credit. Her prior experience includes negotiating complex transactions and leading teams engaged in counseling industry and consumer advocate organizations on regulatory compliance, consumer protection, fair lending, fair housing and fair employment. Patrice mediated employment discrimination claims and arbitrated individual lending discrimination claims made by Black farmers in Pigford v. Glickman, a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and Harvard Law School.

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FinRegLab is extending its investigation of the adoption of artificial intelligence in financial services through a policy analysis focused on the growing use of machine learning models for underwriting credit and a January 17 webinar with senior federal financial regulators to discuss generative AI and other recent developments.
The CFPB issued a blog post noting the potential inclusion benefits of using AI and machine learning models for credit underwriting, as well as risks and compliance challenges with respect to the delivery of “adverse action” disclosures. The agency emphasized the “built-in flexibility” in the regulatory framework and recognized emerging work by lenders and technology companies to enhance the explainability of AI underwriting models.