In Focus Collections Communicating clearly
Last month, CCRMagazine, Bristow & Sutor and Credit Style brought together a senior group of industry professionals to consider customer communications. They were: Kevan McGerity, senior trade finance manager, Terex Aerial Work Platforms (KM); Simon Bayley, sales and marketing director, Moneybarn (SB); Emma Watson, bid and marketing manager, Bristow and Sutor; Nirmal Noteha, credit manager, McGraw-Hill International (UK) (NN); Tariq Ali, accounts receivable manager, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (TA); Phil Rice, head of credit, Aggregate Industries UK (PR); Liam Hills, debt collection director, Loans 2 Go (LH); George Badejo, chief legal counsel and chief risk officer, Loans 2 Go (GB); Mike Abraham, group head of risk, Secure Trust Bank; Paul Hallett, risk and compliance manager, Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance (PH); Andy Rose, chief executive, Bristow and Sutor; Martin Parr (MP); Andrew Burman, credit manager, AB Enterprises (AB); Tom Edmunds, head of collections and recoveries, revolut; Wendy Warrington, credit manager, Hachette; Steve Bramley, sales director, Credit Style (SBR); Nicholas Smallwood Faraci, head of global finance operations, Deliveroo (NSF); and Paul Gordon, company credit controller, Securitas
having one self-service touch point to now having eight or nine, and the customers are now more willing to self-serve than they are to pick up the telephone. I think by giving customers all those options, you are likely to see a significant improvement in your customer contact rate. We have found that individuals that may feel embarrassed discussing their financial circumstance appear to prefer self-serve portal or live chat. At Loans 2 Go, we understand customers may be in a difficult situation, therefore, our focus is to do all we can to help and support them. As you can imagine, it is not in any lenders interest to lend money to consumers that cannot pay back. For us, investing in omnichannel has helps us improve our bad debt provision.
What is the most useful technology available to collectors today? NSF: The system piece is absolutely key, but why is it that companies today still do not invest in technology for accounts receivable and credit control? We invest in P2P and we
ensure that our suppliers get paid on time, but why do we not invest in getting the information out correctly, timely, and first time, and then tools to efficiently enable us to collect the debt quickly? I appreciate the
It is not in any lenders interest to lend money to consumers that cannot pay back
importance of P2P models and we are in the process of implementing the same, whilst currently going through the demo stages of AR and credit-control solutions.
NN: Sometimes businesses will not invest in technology for the credit management team because nobody has gone out to do the analysis of the costings or errors.
PR: I will say that the company I work for has invested significantly in P2P and in accounts-receivable technology over the past 10 years. We have a standard Oracle system and a number of bolt-ons that we use in accounts receivable. It is not high, but about 70% of our invoices are electronic. When people sign for deliveries now it is electronic. It is not always a major investment. If I roll things back 11 years to when I joined the company, the business had taken the view that they had needed to build business over the previous 10 years, that had been the business-building phase so there had been no real investment in the accountancy side. But at that period the business was established, sizeable and had profit coming through so they could afford to invest in the back-office because they knew that there were deficiencies and so money to be saved. There will, of course, always be different objectives, because if we invest, say, £5m for a system to save £1m, the business might be able to go and buy a new production asset for the
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Left-right: Martin Parr; Mike Abraham; Nirmal Noteha; Paul Hallett; Phil Rice March 2020
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