Tag Archives: Arrears & Debt resolution

back 2 school

Back 2 School – Managing the Family Finances

Introduction

The School Holidays – great for kids, not so great for parents or their bank balance. Childcare, entertainment, time off work, extra food, new phone, new laptop, extra electric, gas, water, holiday clothes, new uniform, holidays and day trips…need we go on? Managing the family finances is a balancing act for many.

Family income and expenditure has been under pressure for a few years now, however, we still want the best for our children and for them not to miss out. At Saascoms we work closely with the Credit and Collections industry and as a member of MALG we understand how easy it is for debt to creep up on families.

managing the family finances

A financial shock to a family with a stretched income and little in emergency funds can have a massive impact. An illness, accident, redundancy, pregnancy, and many other events can create financial hardship overnight.

So how do we enjoy the School Holidays without financial stress?

Managing the Family Finances

Plan

Sounds simple, but if you have an outline of activities, childcare, day trips and holidays it will be easier to calculate the budget you need. Don’t just wake up and wing it every day!

Budget

Set a daily or weekly budget and stick to it. If you go above budget one week, then go under the next. This way you can manage expenditure.

Clear Out and Sell!

Spring clean the kids rooms, garage and shed, then it’s off to the Car Boot and the Charity Shop. Turn those old toys into cash and get the kids to treat you with their takings! It’s the Bank Holiday Weekend coming up – perfect timing.

Bob a Job

Showing our age here, but teach your kids the value of money by getting them to help in the garden, round the house or cleaning the car before they get treated. A good work ethic based on reward for jobs done isn’t something they learn at school.

Bargain Hunt

Coupons, offers, meal deals – don’t pay full price unless you have to! Look for refurbished Phones and Laptops, many of which come with a warranty and are good as new. Try Meelie Mobile for instance.

school book

Conclusion

The Summer Holidays don’t have to be expensive. Bake a cake, paint and craft, games in the park, picnics in the sun (we’ve had a pretty good summer so far), join local kids clubs etc. Fun doesn’t always start with cash.

At Saascoms we have families too and know the summer holidays can be both a blessing and a curse. Hopefully our tips might have helped!

household debt

Should we worry about Household Debt?

Introduction

According to the government, the average UK household debt in 2024 was 125% of disposable income, putting the UK in the top half of OECD spending. With more people in debt than ever before, volatility in interest rates and a cost-of-living crisis, the question is should we worry about household debt?

The UK’s Debt Position

We are a credit using nation, from cards to Klarna, mortgages to car loans, the UK population has been encouraged to ‘buy now and pay later’ from an early age. Socially and culturally credit is both acceptable and affordable. However, the Scandinavians and Australians leave the British behind with up to 227% household debt versus disposable income. At the other end of the scale people of the Czech Republic stand at less than 60%.

debt consultation

Why the Disparity?

For Scandinavians and Australians property prices lead to higher mortgages and therefore greater debt. A strong economy for both regions gives people and institutions the confidence to lend more, meaning the question should we worry about household debt isn’t a significant consideration for these nations. There is confidence in getting employment and in the welfare state, so leveraging credit isn’t seen as a major risk.

At the other end of the scale, people in countries where the economy isn’t stable, employment not as plentiful, wages not as high and property cheaper, credit isn’t as popular. Examples would include Greece. Also, culturally credit may not be popular. For instance, in Germany credit and debt are frowned upon and something to be avoided and not embraced, so debt stands at 78% of disposable income.

Is Household Debt a bad thing?

‘Buy now pay later’ can help with people’s lifestyles and life changes. A growing family might necessitate a larger car or house, by waiting until you can pay cash for either, the kids might have grown up! A young person might go into debt to fund their education, viewing it as an investment in themselves and a promise of a higher salary in the future.

For the economy, the ability to borrow or receive credit can help smooth out downward periods in the economic cycle and reduce shocks to both households and the economy. Cheap credit may also stimulate the economy as people may borrow more when interest rates are low and increase their spending.

household debt

So should we worry about Household Debt?

We should worry about irresponsible lending or irresponsible borrowing. Households living beyond their means with no contingency fund, unemployment cover or disposable assets are at risk of a major shock should health or employment be affected.

Lenders who are not prudent about who they lend to are also in danger of making serious mistakes with lasting consequences (the financial crash of 2008 still has repercussions today).

Individuals, households, lenders, regulators and the government all have a responsibility when it comes to credit and debt. The impact of financial hardship on a household is second only to health in how it can change lives – and not for the better. Managed debt can help households thrive and enjoy life, going on holiday, buying a dog, extending the home. Ultimately life is for living and we only get one chance at it.

Conclusion

The UK is a nation which utilises credit but is by no means the highest in the OECD. We have strong financial rules put in place by the FCA and other regulators, however we have a weak welfare state when it comes to looking after the middle classes in times of unemployment. As a rule a household should have 3-6 months contingency to cover outgoings should health or unemployment affect earnings, this is the accepted cushion to minimise financial hardship.

At Saascoms we develop software widely used by the credit and collections industry, and have a unique view of the market from both sides.

Saascoms AI

Artificial Intelligence in Credit and Collections

Conversational commerce has grown significantly, especially during COVID restrictions. Consumers now expect to engage at their convenience, using multiple technologies.

It is predicted that by 2025, 85% of all customer service interactions will exist without person-to-person involvement.

Saascoms Omnireach is a conversational agent platform which centralises all forms of chat (webchat, SMS, e-mail, Whatsapp and other social media) onto a single engagement platform.
The customer can communicate via their preferred channel and switch between channels during their interaction without needing to re-validate their ID.

At the heart of the solution is a powerful and trainable “frontline” AI chatbot that communicates in 92 different languages and analyses conversations using sentiment, key phrases and natural language processing (NLP). The AI chatbot is contextually aware and, by machine learning, becomes progressively smarter.

This ‘virtual assistant’ has a pre-programmed ‘Arrears and Debt Resolution’ knowledge base taken from tens of thousands of interactions in a DCA environment and is used to train machine-learning algorithms that power our AI.

The AI engine has monitored and analysed over 100million conversations and agent responses within the Collections & Arrears environment over the last four years, ensuring our NLP engine has a 99.7% intent and sentiment match success rate. This makes it possible for the AI to identify up to 75% of the customer intents at the adoption stage.

By providing ‘frontline’ support to the agent function, conversational AI analyses chat quickly and in real-time to automate conversations, drive efficiency, and respond to customer needs. In the first instance, the AI will identify and verify (ID & V) the client via an API or data feed into the client CRM database. Once security has been passed, the AI Chatbot will accurately identify the customer’s intent and respond accordingly.

The Chatbot detects nuances in a customer’s questions and responses and gives relevant answers the way a human would. The conversation continues until a question has been answered, their problem has been solved, or until the request is transferred to a live agent.

Many tasks can be dealt with without the need for agent engagement, as the Chatbot takes the customer through a workflow process The Omnireach AI typically resolved 27% of all interactions with a single line response and 42% without live-agent involvement. The latest statistics from Q1 2022 suggest 72.4% of conversations engaging with the Saascoms Collection & Arrears Chatbot are resolved on the first contact.

Accurate identification of a customer’s requirements is key to providing a high-quality customer journey, raising engagement, providing better CSAT scores (typical 12% uplift) and improving outcomes. By accurately identifying intent, the AI can route more complex enquiries to the best-equipped agent team to deal with them. Conversation CSATS suggest 89.3% of customers were completely resolved with the Saascoms AI Chatbot.

Using AI and routing to a specialist team makes customer conversations more meaningful, and agents have more time for complex interactions. Collections have been proven to increase by over 10%. The AI is trained to quickly identify a ‘vulnerable’ customer and immediately divert to a specifically trained live agent where the query can be handled appropriately.

Agents have the ability to help train the Collections & Arrears AI engine. By copying content from conversations and adding them directly into the AI engine, the Saascoms platform will evolve and ensure AI can identify future conversational meanings.

The agent can then free type a reply or select from a branded template, which then adds personal customer information into the response via a link to the organisation’s CRM. When a response is registered within the Saascoms engine, it is added to the data pool for analysing and adding to the ML algorithm.

Omnireach AI conversational technology is utilised by nine collections and arrears organisations in the UK, who, on average, process 2.8million interactions per month. Sectors include energy, telecoms, vehicle finance, home shopping (catalogues), personal finance/loans, and student loans.

Learn More about Omnireach