Start-up Consumer Finance Company

“U.S. Banks Face Up to $320 Billion in Credit Write-offs in 2020 Due to COVID-19”(1)

With the pressures of the pandemic and consumers’ evolving expectations, now is the time to transform Collection & Recoveries (C&R) strategies and models from a labor-intensive, outbound approach, to a loss-preventative inbound and customer-focused operation.

A credit card organization dedicated to helping everyone have access to fair and clear credit engaged Ippon to help improve its collections and recoveries strategies. The client decided to work with Ippon in order to harness our ability to provide a unique mix of financial industry experience, deep technical expertise, and white-glove FinTech integration services.

During the discovery phase, we established the project structure: working sessions with agents, governance forums, a communication plan, and roles and responsibilities. This upfront time investment allowed Ippon to take a high-level goal and break it down into an actionable roadmap, build a robust-ready backlog, and identify dependencies and larger open questions that needed to be addressed to ensure success.

The client’s top use case for the project was to enable their service agents to offer customers settlement and payment programs via the phone channel. After a short discovery phase, the decision was made to implement a completely brand new C&R Platform. Based upon the use case, we chose a SaaS FinTech and leading provider of debt collections software to banks, agencies, and alternative lenders. They were selected for their ability to:

• Improve collections rates by interpreting real-time data to personalize the customer experience.
• Enhance operational efficiencies with intuitive automation that continually optimizes to deliver the ideal experience to each customer.
• Designed to scale with the organization by offering robust and flexible workflow strategies ready to go when you are and keep getting smarter over time with no Machine Learning experience necessary.

Now, it was build and execute time. In just three months using a white-glove approach and Agile framework, we were able to stand up the new platform and enable settlement and payment program offers via the agent channel - SUCCESS!

The client understands that how they care for the customer can be a differentiating value, especially important due to their mission to serve the underbanked. Implementing this SaaS was just the first step in their Collections & Recoveries strategy. The platform provided the client with a foundation to allow them to continuously evolve to provide the greatest possible customer experience, drive efficiencies, and decrease outstanding debt. Other opportunities they are looking to tackle next are:

• Segmentation - Distinguishing delinquent customers requiring human interaction from those who will respond to automated messaging or need no contact at all. Examples like this will allow them to better service their customers and create more impactful and customized outreach strategies.
• Process Automation - Self-service capabilities, for example, can help customers learn about their options before ever talking to the client.
• Create a Digital Layer - Introducing digital communication channels like text, email, mobile apps, and online chat features will allow them to deal with more customers quickly and effectively.

Since this project, the client has turned to Ippon to help with several of these use cases. We have assisted in developing email campaign capabilities, building customer self-service tools, creating a texting (SMS) strategy, and building a workflow solution to handle specialty circumstances, such as bankruptcy and deceased individuals.