Six Ways Automation Helps Fintech Debt Collection

Six use cases for reducing debt avoidance and driving Fintech debt collection

Amid a globally uncertain business environment and heightened regulatory scrutiny, banks, fintechs, and other lenders are facing relentless pressure to improve debt collections, without escalating recovery costs and time. Current debt recovery solutions still rely largely on manual processes, even as the traditional call to collect model is fast losing its relevance in today’s increasingly digitalized world.

Digest this – 66% of contacts with delinquent customers are still initiated via traditional channels despite poor response rates. According to Hiya’s 2021 State of the Call report on global data from more than 150 billion calls, 94% unknown calls went unanswered. Imagine the number of calls a collections representative would need to make periodically to establish contact with a customer.

Fortunately, Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven automation is changing this equation. The debt collection software market size is expected to grow to USD 4.6 billion by 2024, at a robust CAGR of 9.6% from 2019 to 2024. The increasing need for self-serve payment models to speed up the receivables management process and automation in the debt collection process is expected to increase the adoption of digital debt collection services across the globe during the forecast period.

A plethora of opportunities lie ahead by leveraging advanced digital technologies for debt recovery services, and it has a much larger role to play compared to its earlier use as a subordinate mechanism.

AI and automation have a powerful benefit for both fintechs and their customers – it paves the way to financial fitness – helping lower the ‘avoiders’ and enabling people to maintain a healthy credit profile. Let’s deep dive into how this plays out.

Six ways AI driven automation helps debt collection for Fintechs

High collection success rates are driving increased adoption of AI tools such as conversational chatbots, voice systems, text messaging, and more among Fintechs.

For instance, using even a one-dimensional automated business model, like emailing a customer, has demonstrated favourable results and outperformed traditional call-and-respond collections models. Here are six ways that AI-driven automation helps Fintech debt collection.

• Mitigate risks : By combining insights gleaned from customers’ accounts and their online and social activities, fintech collectors can identify potential instances of default and initiate action before it actually occurs. Bots built using Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies can be used to analyze customers’ digital interactions throughout their journey. If a customer encounters a sudden financial issue such as a job loss, these AI tools can alert collectors to proactively reach out to at-risk customers and offer credit counseling support, restructured payment plans, etc.
• Enhance responsiveness : Automation allows customer service associates to access more data and respond to customers’ queries in a time-efficient manner through automated outbound calling and live chatbots. This helps in recovering aged receivables quicker with insights and expertise. It also ensures you’re delivering the right message at the right time for optimal impact and improved financial recovery services.
• Automated payment reminders through text messaging garner engagement rates of over 68%. Collectors can even experiment with automation to improve response rates. According to recent research, minor modifications of automated phone prompts prove to be an inexpensive way for companies to drive deeper mental engagement, nudging customers to remember their intentions. For instance, adding an interactive menu that asks call recipients to select a concrete payment timeframe during the ensuing three days: “If you are going to pay within the next 24 hours, press 1” and so on, continuing through 36, 48, and 72 hours. Such automated intervention also reduces the need to employ more FTEs for follow-ups, and offloads existing resources of routine tasks, freeing them for more value-added work.
• Optimize resource allocation : AI tools can analyze debt collection trends and patterns to identify which employees are good at collecting which kind of accounts and determine the amount of time spent on individual accounts. This enables quick resolution of many accounts and helps fintechs sharpen focus on accounts that will benefit most from human interaction. For instance, Lowell – The UK’s leading debt collection firm, was able to save over 12,000 hours’ worth of time by implementing RPA collection bots and significantly reduced staff turnover by enabling them to take on more fulfilling tasks.
• Improve collections : Fintech debt collection has moved beyond strategies based on broad customer segments. Automation is making mass personalization a reality in the debt recovery space. AI tools deliver the right debt collection process automation strategy for each customer, by evaluating past repayment behavior, strategies that worked, as well as those that have failed. This data helps fintechs build predictive models based on persona segmentation. As the market and customer dynamics change, these prediction models can be modified on an ongoing basis to account for critical new factors and tweak the weightages assigned to existing factors. The result: accurate prediction of the best possible collection methods to reduce avoidance and improve collection productivity.
• Future-proof legal compliance : Compliance issues hurting debt collections are not uncommon for fintechs. Automation of debt collection procedures helps limit liabilities under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Telephone Consumer Protection Act, GDPR, and numerous other applicable regulations. it will be critical for debt collectors to leverage automation and analytics to manage compliance risks on a national level and within each state. Amid an ever-tightening regulatory landscape, it can significantly help fintechs eliminate chances of legal, reputational and financial losses that may arise out of non-compliance.
• Drive greater customer-centricity : Fintechs have always championed customer-centricity and Fintech debt recovery should inherit the same. Automated tools can collect data on users’ preferences related to channel of contact, time, tone of voice, etc., creating customized messaging for improved response and recovery. What’s more – dynamic automation can help fintechs build reactive collections strategies, add/drop strategies based on changing consumer behaviors, life events, etc. Customers also gain a sense of empowerment when they can select the contact channel, their own solutions, and the timing and pace of their repayments.

Non-intrusive debt recovery solution is the way forward

Debt is a stressful, embarrassing issue for people at the best of times, but the traditional financial recovery services model makes the experience worse.

Not only is it obtrusive for customers to receive collections calls, but also it’s completely out of touch with how people prefer to interact with businesses. It’s high time things changed.

The transformational potential of debt collection process automation is yet to be harnessed by the Fintech industry at scale. Being a non-intrusive method that takes away the pain and shame associated with debt to a large extent, automation is the answer to effectively reduce avoidance and bring delinquent customers back into the mainstream.

It also helps Fintechs meet their customers wherever they are, enabling a better customer experience and a personalized approach to collections. More than improving recovery, automated debt collections will be a key differentiator in the future for Fintechs looking to reimagine the customer experience and generate exponential value.

This approach also makes it easy for creditors to adapt and optimize their collections operations at scale, for the channels their customers want to use. It transforms creditor/consumer debt engagement, reimagining the collections experience to drive better results for both parties. Digital debt collection services enable creditors to empower their customers through discreet, convenient and independent debt management facilities.

The result : Supercharging the collections experience — customers are happier, creditors get better returns and operating costs are slashed.

Source: firstsource.com

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