Today, we're announcing the latest version of Plaid Cash Advance Index (CAI), the risk model built for cash advance and earned wage access providers. The newest version incorporates Plaid's Sequential Foundation Model, delivering up to 10% fewer dollars lost at fixed approval rates compared with the previous version in testing. It also adds a dashboard for portfolio and user-level risk operations and offers income insights to inform repayment timing.
Together, these updates give cash advance providers more context on how a user’s financial behavior changes over time, and how that behavior informs repayment risk.
More context behind the model
At the core of the updated Cash Advance Index is Plaid's Sequential Foundation Model. With it, CAI can learn from the order and cadence of events to predict the likelihood of repayment.
That context matters for cash advance decisions. The difference between an advance that gets repaid and one that doesn’t can come down to understanding financial behavior over time rather than in aggregate. That translates into stronger risk performance: at fixed approval rates, dollar loss under the newest version of CAI is up to 10% lower than under the previous version in testing.
A dashboard built for risk operations
Portfolio health in real time
Risk and operations teams can now see how their cash advance product is performing from a dashboard. Teams can track trends, outcomes, and key metrics in real time to inform threshold adjustments based on portfolio performance.
Here’s what you can expect:
Overview metrics like total advance events, including approvals and declines, users, bank accounts, and devices
Performance metrics like average approval rate, repayment rate, and advance amount, including advance amount distribution across seven score buckets from $0–$25 through $500+
Outcome metrics like approval and decline breakdowns and repayment health, including on-time, late, and not repaid payments
One click to the user behind a decision
The new dashboard also makes it easier to investigate individual users. The user-level view shows score trajectory over time, the cash flow and network attributes affecting the score, advance history, and the events behind it.
These views can help teams prioritize repayments. A user whose score has fallen since their last advance presents a different risk profile from one whose score has held steady. Now, teams can see that difference before repayment comes due.
Income insights for repayment timing
Cash Advance Index helps cash advance providers assess repayment risk when deciding whether to approve an advance. Now, CAI income insights can provide additional context for decisions about repayment timing.
Available as an optional add-on, CAI’s income insights returns the user’s next predicted payment date, predicted income on that date, and top three income streams.
Timing can make a meaningful difference. A due date set two days before payroll can lead to a late payment that may have been avoided with better timing information. For users with gig income or other variable pay, income insights can give providers more context when setting repayment terms and timing.
A model that keeps improving
Nearly one million accounts connect through Plaid every day, and Plaid enriches 800 million transactions daily. Cash Advance Index marries network insights with data trained on real cash advance repayment outcomes, making it purpose-built for this use case.
Cash advance risk changes over time, so the model needs to keep changing with it. This is the second release of Cash Advance Index in under six months, and we’re continuing to invest in what comes next.
To learn more about Cash Advance Index, reach out to our team.