In 1956, Bill Fair and Earl Isaac founded FICO, the purveyor of credit scoring algorithms, and since then lenders have used math to make underwriting decisions.

But if you want a glimpse into the future of underwriting — especially in the emerging markets — allow me to introduce you to Entrepreneurial Finance Lab and VoiceTrust, both of which presented at yesterday’s Innotribe event in New York.

Let’s start with EFL, as the company is called. There’s no simple way to originate loans in the emerging world. Credit scoring for much of the emerging markets, which encompass about 22% of global GDP, according to Goldman Sachs, is non-existent. For most lenders in the emerging markets, underwriting is nothing more than “feel.”

Enter EFL, which was voted one of the best startups of yesterday’s Innotribe Startup Challenge in New York City. The company has developed a 45-minute psychographic query that gauges a potential borrower’s truthfulness, ethics and optimism to determine whether that person, relative to other borrowers and potential borrowers, will pay back his loan. The query works on the basic principle of relativism: the more someone feels that other people are, say, untruthful, the more untruthful is that person. In other words, people justify their actions based on their perception of other people, a sort of “Everyone steals, so I can steal” mindset.

Bank Innovation sat down with EFL COO DJ DiDonna yesterday, and it was clear to us that in many ways psychographic underwriting is probably better than credit scoring based on past payment performance. As lenders know, deterioration in credit performance often is derived from outside influences — divorce, job loss, health problems, etc. But only a psychographic analysis can tell a lender — before the default — whether Divorcee A will pay back his loan as opposed to Divorcee B. A psychographic test, on the other hand, can.

Eventually potential borrowers can game a psychographic test, at least to some degree. While DiDonna might not fully agree with this, to us it stands to reason that the more the credit applicant understands the principles of psychographic analysis, the more likely it is that he answers those questions “correctly.” And this is where eventually (admittedly, years out) a company like VoiceTrust will come in. VoiceTrust offers up to three-factor security authentication via voice pattern recognition. The customer sets a voice print, which VoiceTrust then uses for authentication. VoiceTrust even has data that it can use to evaluate voices muffled by a cold.

Biometrics is entering the mainstream. Apple’s next iPhone will reportedly include a fingerprint scanner. (No more pincode logins?)

By combining the psychographic evaluation of EFL and the voice verification, and presumably eventual voice analysis of VoiceTrust, a biometric/psychographic underwriting process takes shape. The psychographic aspect of the underwriting determines ethics and truthfulness; the voice biometric aspect identifies whether the credit applicant is gaming the psychographic analysis. Yes, it is all very “Sneakers,” the 1992 movie with Robert Redford — (“My voice is my passport. Verify me.”) — but we don’t see why it is not possible. It certainly seems better than 1950s-era credit scoring.

The intertwining of psychographics and biometrics could revolutionize financial services. It has implications for PFM, wealth management, and commercial finance, among other aspects of banking, not to mention security and analytics. Most shockingly, psychographics and biometrics could tell you things about yourself that you couldn’t know. Bet you didn’t know that.