Credit, Collections & Insolvency News
This time last year, I only made one prediction with any degree of confidence – that at some point, the UK’s future trading relationship with the rest of the world will be settled, and confidence and stable growth would return. And I still stand by this a year later! 2019 was a tough year –…
Read more
Research is imperative to digitally transform processes to accelerate effective collections. Today’s debt collection pain points are the broken communication channels between customers and collectors. Poor tools ultimately confuse customers, frustrate debtors and collectors, and make it far less likely that parties can come to agreeable terms. There are tools and processes that can modernise…
Read more
A summary of some of the commercial developments in the fintech space for 2019 and looks forward to 2020 with predictions of likely themes. 1 – Partnerships! We’ve seen an explosion of partnerships across the sector in 2019, neo banks and personal finance have spearheaded the rise in marketplace banking offerings. 2019 has seen Monevo…
Read more
Recent research by Bottomline into the thorny area of late payments shows that 92% of financial decision makers admit to having paid suppliers late. In 2017, a slow payer ethic emerged as the biggest challenge to getting paid on time. In 2018, we found that a surprising number of financial decision makers were actively pursuing…
Read more
How can firms use the FCA Rules & Guidelines on Persistent Debt as an opportunity to transform their collections process? The approach to managing persistent debt is high on the agenda of most banks and credit providers. It’s a problem, which needs to be solved – not by just treating customers who are classed as…
Read more
Over the past decade, banking apps on smartphones have given people the freedom to manage their finances when and how they want. But even bigger benefits are just around the corner. In the next 10 years new technology will offer customers personalised financial support, instant home-buying decisions and even tougher cybersecurity. A key factor driving…
Read more
Late payment and bad debt can become serious and sometimes fatal problems for one-man or small businesses. In August 2019, the ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor (BCM) reported that one in five businesses (or 24% of SMEs) were facing serious challenges due to late payments. There are lots of reasons that issues relating to debt arise…
Read more
Following the 2008 recession, economic modelling has increased in prominence in credit risk management, as regulators expect financial institutions to be able to predict the impact of an economic downturn on portfolio losses, to ensure they could withstand another recession. In this blog, we compare the pros and cons of traditional modelling methods with non-linear…
Read moreIn this age of diminishing brand loyalty, the survival of consumer credit providers hinges on two things: their ability to differentiate and to exceed their customer expectations. Data holds the key to both. Creditworthiness assessments are, of course, the starting point for lenders’ use of data. But thanks to the increasing variety of data and…
Read more
Annually, thousands of businesses fall victim to fraudulent customers. Footlocker, for example, recently got swindled for 1.8 million Euros by a fake company called Ups Consultancy. This case also involved ING being fined on grounds of negligence in its due diligence of fraud and was widely reported on in the media. So, fraud not only…
Read more
The FCA Consultation Paper announcement marks the move from traditional motor finance commission models – which incentivise the dealer/broker to raise customer interest rates in order to get higher commissions – to an approach that provides more positive outcomes to car buyers. As we saw in the report from earlier this year, the FCA want…
Read more
Hardly a day passes without there being a new report on shrinking manufacturing output, increasing costs to business and fears of an emerging global recession. UK manufacturing activity is at its lowest level since July 2012; sales to the EU have dipped as European purchasing managers look closer to home in Brexit uncertainty; and US…
Read more
The benefits of adopting new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are not always immediately apparent for businesses in all industries and sectors. But for the risk sector, it is now obvious that there are enormous gains to be made. Its application can serve a wide range of functions – including fraud detection, risk management,…
Read more