In Focus Consumer Credit
Taking a view on technology in these troubled times
Last month, CCRMagazine brought together a group of senior professionals, online, to consider the role that collections and technology will play in the coming year, amidst concerns over increasing economic pressure. They were: Andrew Jackson, managing director, Swishfund (AJ); Chris Leslie, chief executive, Credit Services Association (CL); Disha Sawlani, credit risk specialist, Acer Europe (DS); Fiona Ibbotson, debt recovery operations manager, Anglian Water Services (FI); Gary McCready, commercial strategy and analytics director, Carphone Warehouse (GM); Helen Patterson, customer service manager – credit management, Northumbrian Water (HP); Jaime Nuwar-Graham, customer services – director of planning, Lloyds Banking Group (JG); Jon Hickman, chief executive officer, Flexys (JH); Katherine Bailey, group credit, risk and compliance manager, Valor Hospitality Partners (KB) Katy Everett, head of collections systems and analysis, Lendable (KE); Kishan Bhatt, collections strategy manager, Shell Energy Retail (KBH); Liam Hills, customer service director, Loans 2 Go (LH); Paddy Gilling, solutions consultant, Flexys (PG); Marie Moffatt, head of collections and recoveries, Zopa (MM); Matt Washington, head of debt, British Gas (MW); Raj Gill, collections manager, Spark Energy (RG); Richard Kernick, collections director, PSA Finance UK (RK); Russ Barrett, head of collections, Esme Loans (RB); and Stuart Sykes, chief operating officer, Oblix Capital (SS)
already – the ‘bank of mum and dad’ is running dry. So where is the money coming from? Because the reserves are being whittled away – maybe they were used before on a deposit for a house, so I think we will see signs that the more stable bracket of 45 to 65 year olds is starting to come unstuck. There is going to be this shift, so it is all
about looking at the data-set and deciding ‘we normally look at the 18 to 25 year olds, or this other group, but are we now having to look elsewhere’ because I have certainly seen evidence that we need to do so.
JG: It is interesting to look at the work that Stepchange has been doing because there was always a debate with the regulators as to how we could make a decision without doing a really detailed I&E assessment.
But, even in the best of times, that has
always been fortune-telling – what will happen in the future – and now it is even more evident than even because who knows what the situation will be like? But I think that it has helped to culturally
and realistically ground some of the regulators that it is not necessarily reasonable to be able to predict the future so the whole essence of the Stepchange Covid Plan is: do you think that you can afford half of your repayments, and can you do that for six months? And if that is the case, then we are not going to be bothered with spending 30 minutes on an I&E. We tried to implement that as a lender
last year, on the basis that if someone had lost their job, they would not know what their future would be, but this would probably have not gone down well with
conduct testing. Now there is a real reality- check on the scale of future uncertainty.
The suggestion is that the pandemic has ‘delivered digital 10 years early’ – is this your experience? How do you feel that your technology needs will change moving into the coming period? JH:We have gone from a situation where, back in the nineties, creditors would litigate almost as soon as a customer went into arrears, to a situation after the 1992 recession where arrears volumes spiked but due to the wider economic circumstances, litigation was not effective. It amounted to effectively throwing good
money after bad. I think we are now seeing a similar
paradigm shift away from manual, agent-led collections to more
>>
Left-right: Helen Patterson; Jon Hickman; Katherine Bailey; Katy Everett; Liam Hills January 2021
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