Bruce Curry

As I think about predictions for next year in debt management for Europe and the UK, there are three big concerns: Consumer indebtedness has not abated at all and has reached record highs in some markets. Most economic markets are on the verge of a downturn. Brexit Before I get to my predictions, let me explore each of these. Consumer Indebtedness…

Changes in the credit industry are playing havoc with traditional collections strategies and tactics. However efficient and advanced an operation is, it’s being stress-tested by a multitude of factors in ways not seen since the last global recession. Here are some of those factors, and the questions they raise for debt collectors: Consumer demand for credit – if…

Following last week’s posts about static delinquencies and other delinquency trends, I have had several conversations that lead me to wonder how holistically we are looking to solve some of the more challenging credit management issues. Here are my concerns. Firstly, I have just seen the damage a collections shop that is not ready for IFRS 9 can experience. This has…

Here’s my advice for 2019 in a nutshell: With IFRS 9 impacts and €780 billion of NPL in Europe alone, stop reading about AI and start thinking about optimization. OK, let me unpack that. I’ll break it down to four focus areas. Accounting Rules & Regulation Overload You don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict that regulation will continue to drive change in the…

In my last post I described changes in collections and the debt purchase market as banks focus on non-performing loans (NPL) and non-performing exposures (NPE). Now let’s look at what should be happening — but isn’t. NPL and NPEs can’t be considered in a vacuum. Banks face huge challenges over the next two years, and nearly all bankers view attracting new customers a…

Are we making the progress we want to see — and regulators demand — on non-performing loans (NPL)? That’s the topic I explored with banking leaders from across the Europe, Middle East and Africa at our EMEA Risk Leadership Summit in May. Taking a step back from all the activity going on in this space, it’s clear that major shifts are occurring, but there are some sur…

For all the talk in the UK about disruptors and fintechs and new entrants to the credit market, and about how banks and card issuers need to manage customers in arrears, there’s one group that seems strangely absent from this focus: retailers. It is estimated over £200 billion of UK household debt is in unsecured retail credit. Much of this is covered by credit and de…

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority desperately wants to help 3+ million borrowers get out of persistent debt — but will the fixes work the way they want them to? The FCA estimates that credit card customers could save up to £1.3 billion a year if its proposals are enacted. The FCA’s proposed remedies “include firms, at designated timeframes, prompting customers to…

Last year saw collectors making plans to deal with new regulations, as were their colleagues throughout banking. It’s no surprise then that the most popular collections posts on the FICO Blog dealt with getting ready for IFRS 9 and GDPR. Here were the top 5 posts of 2017 in the Collections & Recovery category: IFRS 9 and Collections – The 31-Day Time Bomb In…

In 2017, collections professionals were being pulled in multiple directions at once by regulations, digital transformation, customer demands and new ways of working. Sometimes these align, but often it feels like being drawn and quartered. To make it worse, these pressures make it easier to drop the ball on BAU, causing significant dips in delinquency performance, wh…

In debt management, everything comes down to money. Even the collections systems you use are about stretching that last dollar or pound or euro until it snaps. However, if you don’t know what’s on the market today, you don’t know what you’re missing. You might be missing the opportunity to make a dramatic improvement in your performance and productivity, without spen…

Debt collectors, like everyone else in financial services, are drowning in regulatory changes. In my last posts I’ve discussed IFRS 9, GDPR and, to a lesser extent, the basket of fun known as PSD2. One of the natural human responses to change is to narrow one’s focus to the necessary task at hand and push everything else away. Just focus on ticking the boxes, and ign…