Despite record investment in digital transformation in FSI in the past five years, many financial organisations are still over-reliant on legacy customer contact systems and disparate Excel spreadsheets to manage business-critical lending and collections activities.
Unexpectedly, these disconnected systems are prone to human error, require significant manual upkeep, and offer little ability to innovate, scale and grow services and products.
“Finance has entered a global age of technology. As cloud becomes the norm, with applications and micro-services, you’ll be able to drastically reduce the complexity and cost of technology, without sacrificing functionality.” (Deloitte, Finance 2025)
Deloitte, Finance 2025
With the CRM market set to be worth a whopping $49.6billion globally by 2025, here are ten good reasons why investing in cloud CRM for lending and collections will be the best IT investment you make this decade.
As financial services come of age, all across the eco-system, attention is turned to cloud solutions and strategic FinTech partnerships to enable product and service innovation. The good news? The focus is on reducing complexity and ending the reliance on over-configured systems. Instead, providers aim to enable internal development and support organisational change, by helping firms drive continuous improvement.
Connect customer data and interactions across your organisation to eliminate data silos and enable innovation. Cloud CRM allows you to update records and report in real-time, connect sales, service and marketing programs and completely remove the need to rekey data across multiple platforms.
With every agent action date-code stamped and recorded in the collections CRM platform, compliance is taken care of too. From KYC and AML processes to meet regulatory standards for complaints responses, all data is tracked as standard and fully auditable. Meaning that meeting your regulatory obligations becomes a simple reporting exercise. What’s more, internal capabilities mean your teams can react and build new workflows and controls to meet regulatory changes, fast.
Free up your agents from tedious but important daily administration, by automating repeatable tasks into easily-configurable workflows. Drag-and-drop functionality, as well as easy-to-deploy configuration wizards, mean IT and Operations teams can work directly with collections agents to turn their manual processes into time-saving automation. Leaving them free to manage higher-value tasks and customer interactions.
The pandemic has been a massive proof-of-concept exercise for digital transformation and the power of digital customer journeys in collections. Where brute force from collections shops was the strategy of choice in generations gone by, digitalisation has proven to empower delinquent consumers, in the form of flexible options to pay down their debts. With collections CRM, you can set up a connected, automated collections and communications strategy. That is, provide omnichannel contact options across SMS, email, apps and chat as well as mail and call options – all with convenient next-step payment options. Your contact strategy also needs effective…
With rich, accurate customer data democratised across the business, teams will be able to develop segmentation strategies using a range of variables. From days delinquent and risk value to the business to behavioural segmentation based on propensity to pay, being able to leverage your data to improve collections rates is a powerful tool that would be near impossible without a collections CRM. Longer term, you’ll build a strong picture of which delinquent accounts require which strategic contact, ensuring your digital options serve those customers most responsive to those channels, with agents tackling higher value accounts in the red.
It’s worth remembering that consumers in sticky financial circumstances still experience the highly personalised consumer environment we live in. And that personalisation (backlink to personalisation article once live) can be a highly valuable tool in collections too. Leverage simple actions enabled via CRM like including customer names in messaging or recording their preferences for contact. Consider allowing the user to tailor their own online portal. Perhaps the ability to flex the Direct Debit date or include their preferred name, even change the colour scheme or create an avatar. Connecting the customer with the process doesn’t just improve and humanise the lender experience, it also has the power to greatly improve repayment rates and increase your bottom line.
As we learned during the pandemic, being digitally agile and responsive to the crisis is business-critical for all lenders. The shift to remote work and transacting was easier for those already engaged with FinTech partners (backlink to Fintech article when live) and who had begun a digital transformation in some format within the business. A recent McKinsey report highlights that decisions and digital investments made in the next 18-24 months will be business critical to success in the future. Centralising your data with CRM will empower the sort of innovation and organisational change that the future of financial services demands.
We reported recently about the uptick in customer satisfaction in collections (backlink to Fintech article when live) during the pandemic, due in part to the increase of self-serve digital portals, apps that can be used on the go and payment-by-text link functionality. Consumers love autonomy and being able to pay and engage on their terms. CRM for collections makes this possible, with account records unified securely across all touchpoints, customer activity updated in real-time, and a transparent audit log viewable by those with the right permissions. Your customer’s NPS and your bottom line will thank you.
Implementing a collections CRM and the digital communication strategies above are the quickest way to engage (and re-engage) your delinquent customers through channels of their choice. Not only will you start to realise lost revenue and understand your risk segments better. You’ll also see the bottom-line impact of automation efficiencies and productivity gains. This incrementality can impact operating leverage and ultimately have an extremely important impact on annual revenue.
Ultimately, digitally agile lenders are leading the way in the global age of technology and cloud CRM is the key to change enablement. Beyond improved loyalty and sentiment, the benefits of the shift to digital engagement are immeasurable.
Financial Cloud is fully customisable, easily integrated with existing systems and can be implemented rapidly for proof of concept. Get in touch today for a demo, or email sales@financial-cloud.com to discuss your needs in more detail.