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Smart, ongoing customer communication matters. Especially when it comes to collecting debt. And as we’re all learning, much more during a pandemic. I’m a communications guy through and through, with 25 years helping organizations create powerful communication strategies. I get a lot of questions about the digital transformation. Today, I’ll share insights I’ve lear…

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,…

The recent announcement from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority concerning its expectations about what to do next with customers who have been affected by COVID-19 — whether they have taken a payment holiday or not — underlines the importance of customer communications. This is true whether the customer is in collections or up to date, but assumes even greater impor…

Affordability and driving the right outcomes for customers has never been so front of mind for credit lenders. Over the past couple of months, every market has been challenged to deal with credit-stressed consumers, in situations where they didn’t necessarily expect to be. In the UK alone, it is estimated that more than 80 million affordability assessments are comp…

The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly placed collections & recoveries right at the centre of telecoms’ response to ensure customers stay connected and are given some relief in their payment terms. CXOs are seeing C&R teams in a new light. But there’s a problem: Years of underinvestment has left many teams for collections in telecommunications with limited tools,…

In previous blog posts, I described the challenges collection organizations have faced during the pandemic, and the use of automated communications as one of the ways to help enhance collections results. Another approach to enhance collection operations will be the use of predictive and prescriptive analytics to better determine and/or predict the situation of individ…

The economic impact of COVID-19 has been surreal – months of lockdown and partial lockdown has created a black hole in everyone’s finances, be they a government, a business or consumer. I recently discussed the four key changes in collections we have seen at FICO in an interview with Global Risk Community. Here are those changes. 1. Digital Collections Previo…

I was privileged to join Bruce Curry on a series of two digital roundtables recently, where 13 experienced minds of the industry got together to discuss the current and future situation around collections and recoveries during the current debt tsunami. The attendees had a combined experience of over 300 years across analytics, credit risk and operations across Euro…

As noted in my 2021 debt collection predictions, and in previous posts, what we are experiencing is nothing less than a debt tsunami. Just as an actual tsunami is a series of waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, a debt tsunami is a series of consumer arrears drivers affecting the credit portfolio of a large body of creditors. Some of those d…

Let’s face it, 2020 didn’t turn out exactly the way any of us envisioned it.  The pandemic turned most of our lives upside down.  It caused devastating effects to our daily routines, our families, our schools and our economy.  Within the collection industry in the United States, State and Federal Governments imposed significant constraints because of CO…

In my last post, I discussed a new approach to affordability assessments using Open Banking data. In this post, I’d like to take a step back and discuss a phased approach to collections in the current crisis, as well as the role of omnichannel communications. I have recently presented on this topic with Olly Betts, CPO of OpenWrks, and Russell Robinson, VP for Custome…