Huw Vaughan

The question of multi-channel vs. omni-channel communications may seem to be a matter of semantics. But in fact it's hugely significant, and never moreso than now, when the ending of furlough schemes, payment holidays and business support schemes will bring about a big increase in the volumes of customers facing financial vulnerability, while those needing to col…

In my series of posts on the disruption caused by the pandemic to financial services customers in the UK, and the impact on debt collection communications, I have explored: How this disruption affected customers’ ability to get in touch with their provider at a critical moment in time, using data from the FICO and Censuswide customer research How thi…

In my last post, “Debt Collection in the Pandemic: Why UK Customers are Dissatisfied”, based on insights obtained from a FICO and Censuswide customer survey, I looked at the importance of KYC (“Know Your Customer”) in collections and some of the practical steps that you can take to eradicate customer dissatisfaction by ensuring the delivery of effective communication.…

Knowing Your Customer, or KYC, is just as critical in debt collection as it is in other parts of the business. However, a recent survey by FICO and Censuswide shows just how far lenders are in the UK from doing effective customer communication based on KYC. KYC is a general legal obligation on the part of financial institutions to formally identify their customers.…

Two months ago, I posted about why it is important for collections operations to adopt a forward-looking approach to debt management – basically the importance of having a clear and compelling vision. New guidelines from the FCA that call for operational resilience in collections reinforce this point. Amongst the many valuable articles that have been published duri…

If, like me, you have been lucky enough to have continued working during the lockdown period, you have probably never been busier. No early morning virtual workouts or goat yoga for me, nor binge-watching Tiger King. However, I have managed to get hooked on BBC2’s Make Your Home Perfect, which in a roundabout way led me to this quote from architect Frank Lloyd Wright,…

In a world of “digital enablers” — Web capability, mobile apps, VOIP telephony, payment tokenisation, etc. — you would think that omnichannel would be easy. You would think that joining a few customer contact channels, just voice, SMS, email, web, automated payments, app and a couple more, would be quite straightforward. The reality, of course, is very different. The…

In the book Willful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan explains what happens when we choose to ignore the obvious. It’s a fascinating look at why it’s so easy to ignore what’s right in front of our eyes — and I’m afraid that I see many examples right here in the UK credit industry. Now, I’m not suggesting that the majority of credit grantors are negligent, and bury their…

My colleague Bruce Curry recently published a blog on “IFRS 9 & Collections – The 31 Day Time Bomb”. During my various client interactions, I can see that many businesses are developing and testing the impairment models that will give them a good understanding on the financial impacts that the new standard will have on their balance sheet performance, but the oper…