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A Profit-Based Measure of Lending Discrimination (arxiv.org)
3 points by neehao 279 days ago | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: They checked about 80,000 personal loans from a big U.S. online lender for unfair treatment, though the approval model never sees race or gender. Loans to men and Black borrowers earned less profit, showing the model misjudged risk; using those traits would fix it.

Abstract · Algorithmic Bias in Lending: Evidence from a Fintech Audit

Algorithmic lending has transformed the consumer credit landscape, with machine learning models commonly facilitating underwriting decisions. To comply with fair lending laws, these algorithms exclude legally protected characteristics, such as race and gender. Yet algorithmic underwriting can still inadvertently favor certain groups, prompting concerns about whether lending algorithms exhibit discriminatory behavior. Using proprietary loan-level data from a major U.S. fintech platform, we audit lending decisions across approximately 80,000 personal loans. We find that loans made to men and Black borrowers yielded lower profits than loans to other groups, suggesting that men and Black borrowers benefited from relatively favorable pricing. We trace these disparities to miscalibration in the platform's underwriting model, which overestimates risk for women and underestimates risk for Black borrowers. We then show that one could correct this miscalibration -- and the corresponding disparities -- by including race and gender in underwriting models, illustrating a tension between competing notions of fairness.

Madison Coots, Robert Bartlett, Julian Nyarko, Sharad Goel
arXiv:2512.20753 · stat.AP · submitted Dec 23, 2025 · updated Jun 3, 2026
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