FICO Survey Finds High AI ROI, But Low Confidence in Explaining Decisions

A new FICO survey of 1,004 senior leaders in data, analytics, and AI found that 85.1 percent reported that AI had met or exceeded their initial return on investment expectations. However, only 28.5 percent of decisions that directly affect customers were made by AI, and just 5.2 percent were confident explaining those AI-driven decisions to regulators or customers. FICO released these findings in its report, “State of Responsible AI 2026: The Confidence Gap in AI Decisions.”

The report highlights a gap between achieving financial returns from AI and the ability to govern or explain those decisions, especially when they carry regulatory or financial consequences. FICO noted that companies can achieve returns on manual workload tasks without incurring regulatory risk.