Role-based access control in a credit decision engine
Who can edit, test and publish a credit policy matters as much as the policy itself. Segregation of duties and least privilege in a decision engine.
Updated July 2026 · 5 min read
In short
Segregating duties in a decision engine means that designing, approving and publishing a credit policy are separate permissions, assigned to different people. It is completed by granular access control, two-factor authentication and credentials kept out of sight.
Letting the same person design a credit policy, approve it and push it to production with no controls in between is a classic operational risk. Segregation of duties exists precisely so that no sensitive decision rests in a single pair of hands.
Written bySantiago Etchegoyen · CTO at uFlow
CTO at uFlow. Responsible for the decision engine's architecture: API integration, orchestration of credit bureaus and data sources, running models in production, and platform security.
What segregation of duties means in a decision engine
Segregation of duties distributes critical responsibilities across different roles, so that the design, testing and publishing stages of a credit policy never fall to one person without oversight.
Combined with the principle of least privilege — each user reaches only what their role requires — it reduces both accidental error and deliberate misuse.
Access rights every institution should be able to control
- Who can edit credit policies and who can only view them.
- Who can promote a version to production.
- Who administers users, API keys and secrets.
- Which credentials integrations use, and how they are rotated.
How this works in uFlow
uFlow manages permissions per user and provides account security features designed for teams, along with API key management for integrations. Sensitive credentials are handled through secrets and environment variables, so they are never exposed inside the credit policies or in integration code.
Secrets: credentials kept out of sight
Connections to credit bureaus and external services require tokens and keys. Storing them as secrets — and referencing them rather than copying them — keeps a production credential from being visible to anyone who opens a policy, and makes it easy to rotate without touching the decision logic.
Technical documentation
How this is implemented in the engine, step by step.
Common questions
Can we limit who puts credit policies into production?+
Yes. Per-user permissions let you separate who edits, who tests and who promotes a version to production, applying segregation of duties.
Where are credit bureau credentials stored?+
As secrets and environment variables, referenced from the credit policies instead of being written inside them, which lets you rotate them without exposing them.
Related topics
Secrets, credentials and API keys: the other half of decision engine security
Credit policies call bureaus and APIs with sensitive credentials. How to manage them: scoped secrets, API key lifecycle, 2FA and least privilege.
ProductHow the uFlow decision engine does it
Governance, versioning and traceability built into the engine, without slowing the business down.
Explore all guides or read the glossary.
Would this work for your decisioning process?
Transform your credit assessment process with the decision engine.