Communications as a key driver to growth: A conversation with Silvio Tavares, president and CEO of VantageScore

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Paula Davis: Hello, I'm Paula Davis at Heidrick & Struggles’ Corporate Affairs and Communications practice, and we are excited to talk about communications and how you move from good to great as a leader. With me today is Silvio Tavares, president and CEO of VantageScore. He is a digital innovator and has led successful digital transformations in multiple industries.

Silvio, thank you for joining us today. 

Silvio Tavares: Great to be with you, Paula. 

Paula Davis: All right, so let's start with what VantageScore does. Can you share a little context with us and your goals for the company? What's your mission? What are your goals? 

Silvio Tavares: Well, VantageScore is one of the two national credit scoring companies, and when people think of credit scoring, usually they think of TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax.

Those companies do something slightly different, which is collect a credit report. What VantageScore does is take the data in those credit reports and we create an algorithm that sits on top. And so we are an innovator in developing algorithms that more accurately predict a consumer's credit worthiness. We have been around for 20 years. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary. I've been CEO for the last four years, and during that time we have just been in a period of hyper growth, and our growth is accelerating.

Paula Davis: That is amazing and an incredible vision and mission.

And fast-growing companies in any industry usually reach a tipping point at which they need to introduce more governance and structure as you've seen through your 20 years. So this can mean bringing in new operating or finance leaders, and it can mean bringing in communications leaderships for the first time.

So what are the most common milestones that a young company—and VantageScore, I would say is still, you know, a young company and growing. So what are some of the milestones that you've been hitting that made it necessary to hire a communications executive? 

Silvio Tavares: Well, so I think it's really important to understand—and this is a key milestone—to understand that communications as a discipline has changed dramatically and is very, very tied to the digital presence of a company. So if you think about VantageScore, we're quite unique. We're an independent company. We're one of the two largest credit scoring companies in the country, but we actually have three companies—TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax—that are the principal shareholders of the company.

But they're also our major distribution partners. Said another way, we don't have a direct sales force, and so as a result, what we have to do is think about communications in the larger digital context, and many times companies don't do that. They think about sales as a separate channel. They think about digital as an important aspect. They think about marketing as an important aspect, but they don't think about how communications interacts with all of those and, most importantly, the digital aspect. And so what we did is we started thinking about, Wow. We have these tremendous digital assets. We have great insight about consumer credit behavior. How can we marry that to our communications function so that we are highly effective, become increasingly the preferred credit score? 

And that was one of the most important key milestones that we came to, which was relatively recent in our 20-year history. We came to that conclusion approximately four years ago, and a lot of companies in mature industries don't make that connection. How does communications work with the other functions, most importantly, your digital presence to achieve your objectives?

Paula Davis: Yeah, we're hearing that more and more that that connector function, that communications people lead, and oftentimes they'll become chiefs of staff for that very reason that they are the conveners and the connectors, and finding the common points to get everybody working well together. Was there any specific opportunity or challenge—and you just talked a little bit about it from that digital perspective—but was there anything specific that affected your timing to bring in a CCO?

Silvio Tavares: Absolutely. So shortly after I became CEO, we were able to persuade the main regulator for mortgages to allow VantageScore credit score to be used for conforming mortgages. The reason why that's important is more than half of the addressable revenue for credit scoring is in one key area, which is mortgages. And what that meant is we had to significantly increase our communications profile. Because if you're a large lender, and you're making the decision as to which credit score you use for your most important consumer loan, which is a mortgage, they wanna make sure they get that decision right, and they don't want to rely on what is perceived as a high-growth, new-tech company. They want to use something that's stable and has been around.

So we had to change our profile in the marketplace from the high-growth, innovative company to the more established company. And that was really important to bring in a chief communications officer to enable us to capture that market position and capture it in a timely way. So that was really what triggered our moves.

Paula Davis: That is so fascinating. So understanding what was important to key influencers in your business helped inform the background and experience of the person you'd need to develop that narrative and where to communicate that. 

So what were the top three responsibilities that your CCO needed to own from day one, and what were the crucial capabilities or skill sets that you needed this person to have and the key experiences you wanted this person to bring to be able to evolve that narrative in the way that you needed to? 

Silvio Tavares: Yeah, so the first key thing we had to do was to establish ourselves as the industry thought leader. Now, in our case, we had the privilege and advantage that we have unparalleled data sets that enable us to create insights around how consumers are behaving in their credit journey. And when we looked at the marketplace, we realized no one was filling that void. No one was talking about how interest rates were impacting consumer credit behavior, how student loans—and whether those loans were in forbearance or out of forbearance based on government policies—how those were impacting consumer credit behavior.

And so what we did is we created a new set of insights. We could then have our chief communicators be out there talking about in the press, on digital media. It was a huge, huge win for us because we established that as a very clear objective—be the industry leader—and we were able to narrowly target our digital assets to align with our communication strategy to accomplish that objective.
As a result of that, we were able to go from a company that was really only occasionally mentioned in the press to outmaneuvering and having a three to one advantage compared to our largest competitor. But it was based on just focusing on how do we get there and how do we leverage our digital assets to support our communications strategy.

Paula Davis: That is amazing. A lot of people think of communications only in terms of risk. And you approached it as a key strategic advantage in growing the business and being a driver to growing the business. 

Silvio Tavares: Yeah. Well, and I would just say because digital is inherently a multi-channel strategy, you have to be in a position where the CEO is heavily engaged in the messaging.

You know, one of the things that I told our chief communications officer from day one is, “At any time, for any reason, if you need me to be on an interview, in a TV studio, speaking with a journalist, here's my cellphone number, here's the cellphone number of my assistant. You reach out to me because this is important, right? And when I can, I will make myself available.” 

If you're a CEO and you're telling your team, “Don't do that. Don't bring me on television. Don't bring me on Wall Street Journal,” that is a mistake. It's not just a mistake, but it's a huge missed opportunity, which your competitors will take advantage of. 

But this is not a vanity mission for the CEO. The reality is you have to develop a team of messengers. And so one of the things that was a principal responsibility of our chief communications officer is not just to support and help the CEO be ready for the tier-one interviews, but also over time to develop a team, a deep bench of messengers that are equally comfortable doing a LinkedIn podcast as they are doing a tier-one TV studio broadcast.

And so we had a lot of hand wringing on the executive team because if you ask the average person “What is your greatest fear?” more than 75% of people answer that question as public speaking. But the reality is I have to do it because it's a core part of my job. I've been doing it in former executive roles at Visa, at First Data Fiserv—really for my whole career. 

We had to do that for all of our senior leadership team. So every member of the team got training. And obviously it's different when you are doing a podcast audio interview versus being in a TV studio versus having a one-on-one chat with a print journalist. But we got them all ready, and it's been one of the greatest joys of my current role to see folks that were sweating before the interview and now feeling completely comfortable in the limelight. 

Paula Davis: I think we all sweat before we get whether it's a podcast or a video. So building on that, tell us about the VantageScore culture and how you have developed it. And when you're making hires, and I don't know if you have your go-to questions or experiences that you look for, but when you're, you know, a small and growing company, any hire you make is a material impact to that culture, potentially, for better or for worse.

Silvio Tavares: First thing I would say is it's important to be clear and prescriptive about what your culture is. All of us have gone through some stage of interviewing for a new role, and it's a really good question to ask when you're interviewing for a new role: What is your culture? Right? 

And for most of my career, when I ask that question in executive interviews, I often got very different responses. And when you get different responses, that's sort of a flag that actually the culture is not defined. At VantageScore, we actually have our culture very, very specifically and purposefully designed.

When you walk into any one of our offices in San Francisco or New York or Washington, DC, it's actually the first thing you see. It's emblazoned over the reception, our values. So I would just say, first of all, be very, very explicit about your values. 

Now, for us, we're a credit scoring company, so it's really important for us to have a culture of innovation. So that's one of the key things we look for across all of our executive(s) is the ability to learn and create new things, which is the nature of innovation. We also, one of our competitive advantages versus our competitor is that we include 30 million more Americans to have access to a credit score. 

And the value of that is it enables the largest lenders in the country to make more loans, good loans that perform well to more people, so we are a key engine of their growth. And so we look for people that can operate in an inclusive environment because that's a core part of our value proposition. 

We also really believe in accountability. When you are David beating Goliath, you need to have a team of people who say, “Everything is my job. I am accountable for delivering results.” And so we have a really significant culture of accountability, and so we actually ask about all of those key cultural traits to any person we hire. And we actually explicitly ask the interviewers on our team when they're looking at hiring someone: “How did this person rank specifically on the traits of our culture?” 

So it's really important, first of all, to be very explicit about what your culture is. Secondly, it's really important to ask specifically, when you are assessing an executive, whether they have those traits, and we get many, many smart people that don't buy into one or another aspect of our culture, and that's OK. It just means it's not a fit. But it's great to find that out before they signed the executive contract and join your company. You don't like finding that out 30, 60, 90 days in, right? And so that's really the importance of culture. 

Paula Davis: And so in bringing in a CCO, is there an onboarding process to help them understand that culture? 

Silvio Tavares: Yes. So one of the first things that we do for all of our executives is we first expose them to the mission and strategy of the company. Every executive when they join is specifically taken through what the elements of our strategy is, and then also how we measure the accomplishment of that strategy. Sso that's really, really important. Second key thing we do is we have a review of the culture of the company where we actually show our executives what does a cultural attribute, a value attribute look like in practice? Let's say it's innovation; let's say it's accountability.

And then the last thing that we do is we actually provide a 30-, 60- and 90-day onboarding program for every one of our executives, no matter how senior. 

And so what we're doing there is building up that executive over the 30-, 60-, 90-day period to really exhibit the key traits in real time and then from there on, obviously they're able to operate on a much broader scale and have greater impact in the enterprise. 

Paula Davis: That is so important, and I think sometimes companies forget just how important onboarding is to setting up anybody for success.

So I love the approach that you take, the thoughtful approach. In terms of those outcomes, as you think about your CCO, what were some of those key performance indicators or in looking at 30, 60, 90 days out, what success would look like, how you define that for your chief communications officer? And you mentioned share a voice earlier on.

Silvio Tavares: Yes, yes. Without getting into too much competitive intelligence, what I can say is, and by the way, this is not the case just for the chief communications officer, it's the case for every executive, right? We measure all aspects of our business. That's what you would expect from a native AI company, the one that's involved in a very quantitative science, which is building algorithms.

Of course, you would expect us to measure everything, right? 

And so we establish those metrics from the beginning, and just to be candid, they are by mutual ascent. It's not like we dictate, “Hey, here are all the things.” It's actually a conversation. “Here are the things that we believe can be achieved.” The executive comes back and says, “Yes, this makes sense,” typically also has some questions about “How do we get it done?” and then we go forth and execute together. 

It's also important to note that, for our company, everything we do has a specific executive name attached to it. And the reason we do that is for accountability. But here's the interesting thing: it also drives a behavior of collaboration, which is another one of our core values because even though there is one person who's accountable, which is very important for every strategic and tactical objective, there is an implied contract with your colleagues that when I raise my hand and I say, “I need help.” And this is the chief communications officer raising his hand and says, “I need help from the chief economist because we need to do this interview with the Financial Times.” “I need help from the chief digital officer because I need to run this campaign on thought leadership before we do that appearance for the CEO at an investor conference.” Everybody at the company is wired to say, “Yes.” I've never, in my four years [as] a CEO of this company, had a VantageScore employee say to me, “Sorry, that's not my job.” So you wanna have that culture where there's one person who's accountable ultimately, but you've got a team of people who are there ready to collaborate and support the objective.

And I think that's a really important time to have those types of values, particularly now, where the operating environment that we are all working on—I don't care what industry you're in—it's changing so rapidly and so dynamically. So you have to have a chief communications officer and other executives who are all-star athletes and can shift and change to the rapidly evolving environment around us. You also need to have a team that is willing to roll up the sleeves and change what they need to do, change their processes in order to accomplish the common objective. 

Paula Davis: Awesome. And speaking of change, is there anything you've learned about the communications function and how you're thinking about how it might evolve to address the challenges that we continue to face—AI, other drivers of growth?

Silvio Tavares: Yeah, so I think this is not going to be entirely a surprise to your listeners, but it's a fundamental change in the communications function. So I talked about one already, which is the fact that communications is a sister discipline to all of the other enterprise functions, most importantly, digital, and they have to work together.

But the other key thing that has changed about communications is historically, we think of communications as an outbound discipline, right? It's about getting your message out. Increasingly, at VantageScore, we think about communications as a listening platform where we get communications in. And so you really have to have in your chief communications officer, someone who's a very effective strategist, a very effective communicator and preparer of the other communicators in the company outbound.

But you also need someone who has the craft of listening well, and this means listening and understanding what journalists are saying or what they're not saying when they're interviewing you. It also means that you have to build an apparatus for data gathering, and so we have developed extensive systems that enable us to capture data about the operating environment and bring it back so that we can calculate it into our decisions and, quite frankly, into our messaging as well. 

I'll give you a really interesting example of this, and this happened approximately two-and-a-half, three years ago. Our head of communication started getting a lot of questions about a Supreme Court decision that was coming out about student loans and whether student loan forgiveness was going to be followed up on by the then-presidential administration. So we got a lot of questions about this, and it was so often the question was coming, “How is this decision around student loans going to impact credit scores and credit ratings?”  We realized this was a big event and quite frankly, a big opportunity.

So because we were listening to that, we said, “OK, let's turn this into an advantage for VantageScore.” We actually did scenario planning. We basically create a press release messaging points if the decision goes either way, either upholding the forbearance or striking it down. And so as soon as the decision was made, literally within minutes, we put out a press release and study because the communications team had done press releases and scenarios for both.

And as a result, we news-jacked the event. And so it's really, really important to be able to listen strategically and use that for competitive advantage.

This is where AI is increasingly a very, very important aspect of listening. So we use AI tools to collect market information within the communications team. We use AI to trend and understand where the news is going. Sometimes we use AI even to formulate the responses, the first draft, because it takes some time to be able to formulate responses.

Obviously, we then edit that. We don't just take the AI response and put it out in a press release, but that ability to sense the market environment, formulate a response, then execute on the response proactively—increasingly, that's an area where technology, and specifically AI technology, is a huge, huge advantage.

And quite frankly, if you're not doing it in the communication space, you're gonna fall really, really far behind. And so that's an area where, as CEO, you should be having the conversation with the chief communications officer. How are you leveraging AI to listen to the marketplace and then formulate responses in a very, very time-sensitive way?

And it is still the case that you cannot exclusively rely on AI, but one day, that will come. But I think at this stage, what you gotta do is be making sure that you're using and leveraging to the maximum extent possible the AI capabilities, including monitoring AI platforms and marketplaces that might give you a headstart on where the market is going.

So we regularly review many of the AI platforms and marketplaces that are looking at events in the future and incorporating that into what communications we should be putting into the marketplace. 

Paula Davis: You know, there are discussions where companies have faced issues driven by bots, and regardless, it still caused a groundswell of activity and perception issues for those brands and companies that need to be addressed. So important to understand those and led by a person. 

Silvio Tavares: Well, and, Paula, on that point, I’m really glad you raised it because we live in a world where digital perception is reality, and it's very uncomfortable to say that your story is not being told comprehensively, accurately, in a way that can be referenced on digital platforms, you're missing a huge opportunity, and quite frankly, you are letting your competitors define reality instead of you defining your own reality. 

And so that's the world we're in. I think it's often very uncomfortable because, often as CEOs and chief communications officer, we actually see the truth, the reality within our own businesses. We have the internal data that shows us that what we are seeing in our business is actually very different than what the digital perception might be, but it makes the job of the chief communications officer all that more important to make sure that you are getting your voice heard in the marketplace so that your actual reality is being accurately reflected in the digital realm. 

It's a really, really key obligation of the chief communications officer to accomplish that and not cede the ground to what oftentimes is inaccurate information in the digital sphere.

Paula Davis: I have one more question for you before you leave us. What one piece of advice would you give to other CEOs, to other leadership teams, at fast-growth companies like yours about how to leverage communications as they scale?

Silvio Tavares: It's very simple: treat communications as a strategic investment and a strategic partner, not as a support function or a cost center. 

Think about communications as your key source of competitive advantage and strategy execution—not as a headquarters, cost function, something that I have to have, right?

Because the reality is that communications can be the tip of the spear and a core foundational pillar of executing on your strategic objectives. And for most companies, that is now more than ever true. 

Paula Davis: There's our mic drop. Silvio, thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you all for listening to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast and make sure you don't miss any of the other great conversations that we'll have.

So please subscribe to our channel on your preferred podcast app. Thank you again, Silvio, for joining us. 

Silvio Tavares: Thank you, Paula.

Thanks for listening to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. To make sure you don't miss the next conversation, please subscribe to our channel on your preferred podcast app, and if you're listening via LinkedIn or YouTube, why not share this with your connections? Until next time.

About the interviewer

Paula Davis (pdavis@heidrick.com) is a principal in the Communications and Corporate Affairs practices; she is based in the New York office.