Australia and New Zealand Banks, Utilities and Telcos Foresee up to 20 Percent Jump in Collections Cases in 2015

FICO survey indicates rising consumer credit market is driving need for efficient collection strategies in the ANZ region

SYDNEY, Australia — March 19, 2015 — FICO (NYSE:FICO), the predictive analytics and decision management software company, today announced the results of a survey showing that collections managers at banks, utilities and telcos in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) foresee a substantial increase in the number of collections cases for the coming year.

This new data comes on the back of Australia’s rising consumer credit, which is estimated by Barclays to have hit 130 per cent of GDP, compared with an average across the advanced world of 78 per cent. According to 2012 figures, New Zealand's household debt-to-GDP ratio was slightly above Australia's and the fourth highest in the developed world.

80 percent of respondents to FICO's survey of collections managers in the two countries said that they expect collections cases to increase by as much 20 percent. The survey also indicated that organizations in the ANZ region are using multiple channels to reach customers about debt. The two most popular channels used by the collections departments are automated voice messages and SMS. While only 30 percent of respondents measure customer satisfaction, those who do said that 70 percent of customers rate their interaction with automated communication as a positive experience.

"Overall, as citizens in Australia and New Zealand spend more, organizations are placing higher importance on increasing the efficiency of collections," said Ross McGown, FICO's managing director of client communication services in Asia Pacific. "There is a desire to reduce bad debts while improving the customer experience. Automated communications achieves this by scaling up the number of people who can be contacted while also customizing the interaction to the customer. We have seen this approach save organizations millions, while improving those ever-important Net Promoter Scores."

Survey participants were asked how FICO^® Client Communication Services (CCS) has impacted their bottom line. More than two-thirds of respondents said that the FICO solution had added at least USD$1 million to their bottom line in the previous year.

The survey findings were collected by FICO in late 2014 from 49 senior collections managers.

"Data-driven, actionable insights drive increased response rates", added McGown. "This continuous business improvement philosophy is key to an automated solution that can be quickly scaled to deal with a 20 percent jump in collections activity. We work with our customers to find and regularly implement improvements to performance. Beyond Australia and New Zealand, we also are seeing strong growth in India, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines."

FICO's Client Communication Services (CCS) currently sends a quarter of a million SMS messages globally every weekday - the equivalent of one SMS for every word in the English language. It also places over 1,5 million calls, which is comparable to calling every household in New Zealand.

Über FICO
FICO (NYSE: FICO) ist ein führender Anbieter von Predictive Analytics und Softwarelösungen für Entscheidungsmanagement, das Unternehmen in über 90 Ländern dabei unterstützt, bessere Entscheidungen zu treffen, um Wachstum, Profitabilität und Kundenzufriedenheit zu steigern. Der zukunftsweisende Einsatz von Big Data und mathematischen Algorithmen zur Erstellung von Prognosen zum Kundenverhalten hat ganze Branchen grundlegend gewandelt. Die Analytics-Softwarelösungen und -Tools von FICO werden in den verschiedensten Branchen verwendet, um Risiken und Betrugsfälle zu verringern, profitablere Kundenbeziehungen aufzubauen, Abläufe zu optimieren und strenge regulatorische Vorgaben zu erfüllen. Many of our products reach industry-wide adoption. These include the FICO^® Score, the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the United States. FICO-Lösungen integrieren Open-Source-Standards und Cloud Computing, um so maximale Flexibilität und schnelle Bereitstellung zu ermöglichen und Kosten zu reduzieren. Das Unternehmen hilft Millionen von Menschen dabei, ihren persönlichen Kreditstatus zu verwalten. FICO: Make every decision count™. Learn more at www.fico.com.

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