In Debt Collection, A Is for Agility
I could start out today by telling you all about Cabot Credit Management. About how they’re a market leader in debt purchasing, contingency collections, process outsourcing and lit…
I could start out today by telling you all about Cabot Credit Management. About how they’re a market leader in debt purchasing, contingency collections, process outsourcing and litigation, supporting 600 users over five sites in the UK and India.
Or how recent mergers – with Cabot Financial, Apex Credit Management and Marlin Financial Services – created a long list of complex challenges. I could mention how growth was accelerating, with plans for additional acquisitions, using different currencies and languages.
But forget all that. The theme today is one word: Agility.
Their challenge was how to retire an aging collections platform and become more efficient in their debt collection. How does one align the troops, when many of their staff members were new to this merged environment? Or keep up with ongoing regulations and requirements from the Financial Conduct Authority? Historical data and information was uneven and it was hard for anyone to fully understand the depth and breadth of existing inefficiencies and gaps.
One thing was clear: There was no appetite for a long, drawn-out implementation of a new platform. Their experience told them that migrating to a new collections and recovery platform would take 18 months and this was unacceptable.
They had six months to get this done.
They decided early on that everything aside from the timeline could and should be challenged. Instead of a waterfall approach, moving from requirements, to design, development, testing and deployment, they would use an agile approach. This started with requirements, to prioritizing backlogs, to sprint planning, functionality testing and release.
They aligned resources which ensured they weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul. They started with migration, went to product support and on to strategic optimization. They spent more time asking “how” rather than “what,” looking at multiple options and complex decisions, from identifying barriers, assessing risk, determining appropriate action and achieving goals.
They changed how they worked. Sponsorship from the top meant the priority was always clear to everyone. They accepted things they couldn’t control and changed course as needed.
What did they learn? That the ability to assess their situation and remain agile was central, and essential, to their success. That iteration is more successful than trying to plan every detail. This approach proved popular across the business, as staff members and system users became engaged, saw progress, had a voice, saw risk reduced, quality increased and fully understood the gains of their new platform.
“We’re now 18 months from where we started and a lot has changed,” says James Edwards, enterprise architect at Cabot. “We’ve acquired dlc and Mortimer Clarke Solicitors, both in the UK, and GESIF in Spain. Customer complaints have been reduced, we’re routing calls across sites, collections have increased, and compliance and monitoring is improved. IT costs have been reduced and we’re more strategically enabled.
“The migration was complete in six months. Our starting position was disparate businesses, systems and processes and a year and a half later, we’re still working at the same rhythm the project established, with vast improvement and a singular focus on our customers. It’s possible to deliver big change at high speed if everyone is moving in the same direction, using an agile approach.”
James Edwards led an “A for Agility” session at FICO World last month. His presentation is available on request by emailing carolbyrne@fico.com. A video featuring James and the Cabot Credit Management story will be available soon.
Popular Posts
Average U.S. FICO® Score at 716, Indicating Improvement in Consumer Credit Behaviors Despite Pandemic
The FICO Score is a broad-based, independent standard measure of credit risk
Read more
The GSE Data Is Public. Here's What It Shows About Credit Score Modernization.
Independent Milliman analysis of GSE historical data confirms what anyone can now verify directly: FICO® Score 10T is the most predictive score.
Read more
FICO® Score High Achievers: Is Age the Only Factor?
<p>FICO’s latest research on <a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/risk-compliance/us-credit-quality-rising-the-beat-goes-on/" target="_blank">national FICO® Score distribution</a> shows that US credit quality continues to trend upwards, with an increasing number of consumers scoring in the highest scores ranges. Given that, we decided it was time to refresh our study on “<a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/risk-compliance/infographic-what-does-a-high-credit-scorer-look-like/" target="_blank">FICO® Score high achievers</a>,” where we examine the credit behavioural profiles of consumers with higher credit scores.</p> <p>As expected, our latest study showed that older people generally have higher scores, as has been the case in our <a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/risk-compliance/age-before-beauty-credit-worthiness-before-youth/" target="_blank">past research</a>. This is largely because they have trade lines that have been open longer, which leads to higher scores (assuming the trade lines are in good standing and all other things equal). The most credit savvy among you will remember that length of credit history accounts for roughly 15% of the overall <a href="http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx" target="_blank">FICO® Score calculation</a>.</p> <p>But for younger consumers, it isn’t too helpful to say, “just wait until you are 50 years old, and that will fix things!” Thus, I decided to dive deeper with our analysis, including looking at the credit behavioural characteristics of younger consumers with high FICO® Scores.</p> <p>In this analysis, I looked at credit characteristics for the two highest score bands, 750-799 and 800-850, which have about 16% and 23% of the population, respectively. I further broke this down by looking at the characteristics of the youngest 15% in each group, which occurs at age 29 for the 750-799 group and 43 for the 800-850. We used FICO<strong>®</strong> Score 9 for our analysis, and examined typical variables of the categories that go into the make-up of the score.</p> <p><a href="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FICO-Score-High-Achiever-table.png"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-29367" src="http://www.fico.com/en/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/FICO-Score-High-Achiever-table.png" alt="fico-score-high-achiever-table" width="715" height="747" /></a></p> <p>Since there’s a lot to dissect in this chart, I’ll highlight a few findings that struck me: <ul> <li><strong>Credit history.</strong> Higher scores are undoubtedly associated with a longer time on file. What’s striking is the higher average time on file for the 800+ group, both overall and for revolving accounts (the most common trade line). Clearly, it helps to start credit use early in life – but that’s not the sole determining factor for high scoring. The younger cohorts in both the 800+ and 750-799 groups have time on file medians significantly less than their older counterparts.</li> <li><strong>New credit.</strong> High credit scorers do, in fact, pursue new credit. We see little variation in months since last trade line opening and last inquiry among all groups observed.</li> <li><strong>Pay on time.</strong> As you might expect, the further in the past the delinquency, the higher the score – and that’s <u>if</u> a delinquency ever happened. 95% of the 800+ people and 72% of the 750-799 group have never been delinquent, which is a striking contrast to the 57% for the total population. The percentages for the younger groups are even higher, especially so for the 750-799ers. Collection items are also scarce for these high scorers. While 23% of the national population have collection items greater than $99, the figures are only 0.5% for the 800+ group and 3% for the 750-799 group. It is clear that, in conjunction with starting a credit file early, paying on time is a key trait of the FICO® Score high achiever.</li> <li><strong>Balance and utilization.</strong> Finally, we look at how credit is being used, focusing on revolving product use. (Since most people only have one mortgage or one auto loan, variation in instalment product figures is minimal and driven by payment history, which is near perfect for high scorers, as we’ve seen.) FICO® Score high achievers tend to have more open revolving accounts. While the % active trades and utilization are generally lower, by no means do high scorers avoid the use of credit products. What drives the difference here is the amount of <u>available</u> revolving credit utilized. The 800+ group is roughly 1/4 of the national median, both in total and on their highest utilized card; they also have lower balances and more cards<em>. </em>The 750-799 group is more active and higher utilized, but still only at 2/3 of the national figures. The young 750-799 group compensate with lower revolving balances and, as a result, lower utilization, which is in line with what we see for the 800+ group.</li> <li><strong>Benchmarks.</strong> I’d like to point out that while this study provides good benchmarks of the typical credit traits of the FICO® Score high achiever, individual credit profiles will vary widely. And keep in mind that when we sort groups of consumers as a whole by different behaviours, some results may look superficially odd. For example, the 800+ band has a longer median average open account time (128 months) than average revolving months on file (140 months).</li> </ul> So, what do we conclude? A huge takeaway is that high scorers don’t have too much in the way of serious delinquencies and negative public record data.</p> <p>In most respects, the young 800+ people are like their peer group. They really only differ markedly in their shorter credit history and higher non-mortgage balance, both of which are a function of life stage. Our results show that you don’t have to be a credit product hermit; these high scorers have more credit cards. The takeaway is to start credit activity early and maintain well-managed and moderate usage.</p> <p>In many ways, the young 750-799 people are more interesting because their age profile is much younger. Their credit characteristics differ more from their peer group, particularly in terms of length of credit history. They compensate by having almost pristine credit records and lower balances.</p> <p>Ultimately, 39% of US consumers are FICO® Score high achievers, which they accomplish by following common-sense credit practices. It ain’t rocket science!</p>
Read moreTake the next step
Connect with FICO for answers to all your product and solution questions. Interested in becoming a business partner? Contact us to learn more. We look forward to hearing from you.