In Focus Commercial Credit
Making a true assessment of income and expenditure
Last month, CCRMagazine and Qualco brought together a group of senior professionals to discuss the future of income and expenditure. They were: Simon Bayley, director, Moneybarn (SB); Myron Fedak, litigation counsel and relationship manager, E.ON Energy Solutions; Katie Stabler, customer experience – delivery & design manager, Lowell; Neil Taylor, industry liaison manager, RBS; Frank Hanafin, director of commercial services, Moriarty Law; Jan-Michael Lacey, head of sales, Qualco (JML); Russ Barrett, head of collections, Ezbob (RB); Damani Johnson, head of compliance, Glenhawk Financial (DJ); Stuart Sykes, chief operating officer, Castle Trust (SS); Sarah Watts, director, Shawbrook Bank (SW); Phil Bellemy, operational governance manager, Shop Direct Financial Services; Leigh Berkley, director of external affairs and development, Arrow Global; Frank Horvath, managing director, Link Financial Outsourcing (FHO); John Preston, head of billing, collections and revenue assurance, Tesco Mobile (JP); Dicky Davies, business adviser, Qualco (DD); Ian Rea, director of group compliance, Cabot Credit Management (IR); and Tushar Das, director customer management and insights, GAIN Credit (TD)
Does everybody agree that trying to find the financial positions of your customers is good? JP: For us, it is very important up front. So when we are onboarding people it is essential that we must understand their financial position. Alternatively, if they have, say, a low-end handset and are changing to a high-end one, then it is important that we should understand the step-change that they are taking in upgrading, so that we can make sure that people can afford that step-change. At the back end, it is more around simply whether and what they can afford to pay in the collections arena. So we work hard at the front end to avoid them getting into collections, and then we need to do an I&E again when they get into collections to understand their circumstances.
IR: From a purchaser’s point of view, it is key because, if we are going to put a
realistic arrangement in place, we need to understand what the customer can afford and that their priority bills have been paid. The only slight caveat to that is that context
is everything. So if we have a relatively small debt and the customer is wanting to clear it – and we can have debts of below £500 – then it may be inappropriate to go through the full mechanism of establishing whether they can afford that, at some point
you have to take the customer’s word for it and, if anything, the customer will get frustrated if you do try and take them through a full I&E to assess whether they can afford a relatively small debt. So generally we would advocate that we
would need one, but not in every situation and every scenario.
From a purchaser’s point of view, it is key because, if we are going to put a realistic arrangement in place, we need to understand what the customer can afford and that their priority bills have been paid
DD: There does comes a time when you have to learn to ignore what the I&E is telling you, because I have heard calls where the collector has taken 20 minutes to go through a full I&E which shows that there is no disposable income, but the customer says ‘but I want to pay £10 a month. ‘Trust me, I know I can pay £10 a month
and morally I want to do it. Possibly I have been inaccurate on saying what my gas or electricity bills are, but I know I have £10 left at the end of each month, so I can afford to pay it, so let me pay it’.
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Left-right: Damani Johnson; Dicky Davies; Frank Hanafin; Frank Horvath; Ian Rea June 2019
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