CSA webinars delivering latest news, updates and guidance to both CSA and non-CSA members.

The FCA’s Consumer Duty is the start of a new evidence-based, outcome focussed era of regulation. With the ‘show me, don’t tell me’ approach, Credit Services firms need to be ready to demonstrate their commitment to the new regulatory requirements from day one – and to delivering ongoing compliance.

In our webinar, we take a closer look at the challenges CSA firms face with the fast-approaching deadline of 31 July 2023. The Regulator’s focus is on how well-prepared firms will be to monitor and evidence compliance to the four main outcomes: products and services, price and value, consumer understanding and consumer support.

We will consider the importance of the new Consumer Duty and the striking difference to TCF, and why there is a need for greater oversight and why random sampling is no longer the answer to a compliant future.

We will share tips from subject matter experts on how to address the Consumer Duty challenges, how to plan for compliance, and why is the long-term compliance strategy so critical for fulfilling your regulatory requirements.

We will offer insight on how RegTech can help firms to achieve consistency in monitoring and evidencing Consumer Duty outcomes while continuing to drive effective teams and improving operational efficiencies.

How RegTech can help firms monitor and evidence Consumer Duty outcomes

Behavioural insights might sound complex, but it's actually a straightforward and practical approach that can help you to improve your debt collection treatment paths and communications.

Research has shown that people's behaviour is influenced by many factors, such as biases and social norms, which can affect how they make decisions. 

By understanding these behavioural patterns, you can design simple and effective strategies that are more likely to encourage people to repay their debts, create a more positive experience for your customers and help you to achieve your collection goals. 

Join this webinar to find out more about customer behaviour patterns, and how they can help you to:
- Make your communications easier for customers to understand 
- Increase their motivation to pay debts
- Improve the repayment process 
- Meet your business objectives

Using behavioural insights to improve customer treatment paths & communications

Hosted by CSA Supplier Member Data on Demand.

Data On Demand provide an overview of how their data and services are delivering value to Financial Services businesses, particularly within Collections & Recoveries. 

The session will focus on:

- An overview of the business, unique data sources and USPs
- How their “Fin.Trace” solution is helping firms improve RPC rates and increase liquidation
- How their “ID.VU” solution can help identify changing customer circumstances aligned to the Cost of Living Crisis and also help firms align with Consumer Duty requirements
- Client success stories and case studies

Data On Demand… What’s all the fuss about?!

Hosted by CSA Supplier Member DebtStream.

Nick Geogiades (Host), Strategic Advisor
Vanessa Northam, Head of Charity Development at StepChange
Deven Ghelani, Director at Policy in Practice
Gareth Bailey, CEO DebtStream

The cost of living crisis, including high inflation, rising interest rates and increasing energy costs is pushing many people into arrears for the first time. These people did not ever think that they would be in these circumstances, many are unprepared, they do not know how collections works and they will not have previously interacted with collection agents and may be unhappy at the prospect of having to discuss their finances with a third party. They will not be equipped to make the best f their new financial circumstances.

Collections operations need to review what they can do to support this group and stop this becoming a long term debt problem, at a time when costs to collect are rising and many in the industry are reporting increasing difficulties recruiting and retaining collections professionals.

A panel of experts, including Vanessa Northam, Head of Charity Development at StepChange, Deven Ghelani, Director at Policy in Practice and Gareth Bailey, CEO DebtStream Solutions, will discuss these issues and potentially mitigating actions under the guidance of our host, Nick Georgiades, Strategic Advisor.

Changes in Collections – The New Demographic

Hosted by CSA Member Relational SA.

High inflation, utility prices, cost of living crisis and companies struggling to make the ends meet are continuing in 2023. It would mean more loans defaulting, moving to debt recovery/collection status. SME companies are getting into difficulties, as well as individuals not able to serve their mortgage and unsecured loans. In UK the very recent forecast expects 750,000 mortgages defaulting in Q1–Q2.

The obvious outcome is the increased NPL volumes and more SME & consumer loan portfolios appearing in the market. This development will impact on the debt recovery/collection operations and portfolio owners and servicers must change their operations accordingly.

Two hot topics in the NPL market are data quality and cost efficiency, required to be in excellent shape for successful NPL operations in the future.

The two new loan types are more diversified and complex so data quality demand is growing. Servicing them is also more complex and, as the new 
challenge, consumer protection laws come to the picture as well. 

When servicing the wider selection of more diversified portfolios, the cost efficiency of the operations becomes more important. 

Relational has been helping the NPL market players for 25+ years with our end-to-end software solutions. We have seen all kinds of market changes and challenges and we can help our customers through any turbulent times. Data quality and cost efficiency are not new to us, our software has addressed them well before the current crisis. 

Therefore, please contact us to discuss your specific needs.

Data Quality & Cost Efficiency Under Review

The FCA’s Consumer Duty places an obligation on firms to evidence the fact that they act in good faith, avoid causing foreseeable harm, and support retail consumers to pursue their financial objectives. In a changing regulatory landscape, we will look at how this fits with the Statutory Debt Repayment Plan and the MaPS consultation on negative budgets, how products such as ISO22458 (Inclusive Service Design) may help, and the role of technology in achieving seamless integration of the Duty.

Duty-bound: Data-driven consumer outcomes

What does digital transformation look like for the debt recovery sector? How do you know what’s required, where to start or what outcomes to expect from the digital transformation of legacy processes? This webinar takes a clear, jargon-free look at digital transformation, explaining how Adare SEC’s agile, collaborative approach is enabling businesses to deliver tangible gains that drive internal efficiencies and better experiences for clients. We look at customer journey mapping – the strategy for truly understanding your customer’s experiences. We offer a real-life example of a debt recovery CX solution. And we leave attendees with the top 5 takeaways for great tactical digital transformation.

Tactical Digital Transformation

The latest CSA Supplier Member webinar is hosted by Saascoms.

With household costs increasing in 2022 Saascoms look to understand the challenges, considerations, and possible remedies of navigating through this period for the Credit & Collections industry. Industry feedback from Collection & Arrears clients on how they see the current landscape, and what they are doing now to mitigate potential business impacts.

How does inflation, economy & other issues influence credit & collections?

The latest CSA Supplier Member webinar is hosted by Complete Communications Solutions Ltd.

How does inflation, economy & other issues influence credit & collections? (PRAC

Company overview - George Tsintilas 
o Key company highlights - financials, personnel, geographical presence, certifications etc. 
o Products & solutions overview 
o Partnerships 

AroTRON - Jarmo Kesanto & Alexandros Efstratoglou
o Main Customers – samples of financial and non–financial customers 
o Out-of-the box solution - what do you get when you unpack the “box” 
o Solution Overview, modules etc.
o Solution for NPL Servicers 
o Why AroTRON - business benefits

Relational SA - Who we are and what we do

Choosing the right channel for engaging with customers is key to delivering the best customer experience. But how do you decide? When is it is right to automate the customer contact on a digital channel and when should the human touch remain a priority? Do you ask the customer how they want to engage with you, or do you set an overarching strategy and stick to it?

Understanding the answers to these questions and others can help shape your customer contact strategy to maximise a positive customer experience.

Arum has teamed up with Sigma Connected to produce an exclusive report (following an in-depth market survey) about the use of voice and digital channels, as well as offer you a free benchmarking assessment so you can see how you compare to your peers and where you could improve your operations.

Join this webinar to:
• hear exclusive insights from the report
• see how you compare to your peers when it comes to your voice and digital strategies
• find out how you can gain access to the full report and free benchmarking assessment

How do your digital & voice collections strategies stack up against your peers?

In this exclusive CSA webinar we’ll explore how Debt Managers put mobile communications at the forefront of their collections strategy and take a look at some of the results they drove including:

• £4.7 million in new arrangements
• Thousands of updates to contact information
• A new vulnerability reporting system
• Increased back office efficiencies and employee engagement

Gareth Hall, Senior Collections Manager at Debt Managers will be joined by Solutions Strategist, Simon Akufo from leading mobile solutions provider Esendex, to talk through the transformation process; from how they identified the need to move to mobile first, to implementing a new portal and communications strategy. 

They’ll share results, tips and tricks learned from the project so far, and what they think the future holds for mobile collections technology, with an opportunity for Q&A.

Moving to mobile first: How Debt Managers drove £4.7million in new arrangements

Data on Demand will be joined by a panel of industry peers to discuss firms approaches to achieving Better Customer Outcomes. The discussions will focus on 3 broad topics:

• Is a digital journey the key to success?
• What data and platforms should firms be considering? 
• Where are firms focusing their efforts and what are their expectations for the year ahead?

Presenters
• Simon Gregory – Data On Demand (host)
• Stuart Murgatroyd – Data On Demand (panelist)
• Helen Lord – CEO at Vulnerability Registration Service 
• Paul Chong – Co-Founder at Ophelos

Achieving Better Customer Outcomes

The Collections Learning Initiative (CLI) from the Credit Services Association (CSA) is an affordable and effective way to upskill collections staff at all levels, giving them instant, convenient access to high quality, flexible virtual training materials tailored to the needs of the individual and the business.

Developed by industry and Learning & Development (L&D) experts, the interactive, engaging, ‘pick and mix’ modules are designed for those working in roles where knowledge of compliance and latest industry regulation and best practice is beneficial.

The modules work alongside existing internal and external training to lay the foundations of collections capability.

Learn more at www.csa-uk.com or contact us: sales@csa-uk.com.

Collections Learning Initiative (CAL) - platform demo

Hybrid working patterns are quickly becoming the norm. Employees are splitting their working time between home, the office, and other workspaces - and legacy systems and strategies are struggling to adapt.
When it comes to communication management, there is a real fear amongst professionals that remote working is putting compliance at risk as well as damaging the customer or citizen experience. If organisations struggle to keep dispersed teams and colleagues connected and enabled, there is an inevitable impact on the quality of communication and service provided.  
These fears came to light in our recent research programme which captured the views of senior decision-making professionals on post-pandemic customer communication pain-points, challenges and ambitions. In this webinar, we will outline some of the most pertinent findings from the research and discuss how the time is now for solutions such as hybrid mail.
Hybrid mail is playing a key role in enabling professional, secure and compliant messaging from anywhere – no matter where core staff are operating. 
So – what are the challenges and fears associated with new ways of working, and how can solutions such as hybrid mail transform a post-pandemic challenge into a cost-efficient, quality-focused communication model for today? Learn more in this informative webinar.

Enabling anywhere operations – and relieving remote working fears

How you receive / collect payments is constantly evolving as more and more payment touchpoints are being added. Trust Payments have developed a truly unified platform that allows you to safely and efficiently collect payments from your clients. Via a single integration, the technology allows you to collect funds via ECOM, MOTO, MOBILE, Pay-By-Link and Recurring Transactions. You can also make use of our VAU & ABU solution so you never miss a payment. Find out more at our supplier Member webinar

Auto-Tune your payment processes

It is clear that in these unprecedented times, with some employees having worked from home for 18 months now, technology will continue to play a vital role in enabling firms to maintain the level of service that meets the FCAs Complaints DISP rules.   A robust, scalable, web-based complaints solution will allow firms employees (as some continue to work from home), to record, manage and resolve complaints in a fair and reasonable manner. The technology allows for cases to be linked to specific events (such as Covid-19), allowing for consistent handling of the process, with key learning opportunities identified, allowing firms to rectify or address short-comings quickly, where required. Embedded Summary Resolution Communication and Formal Resolution letter quality assurance checks can be undertaken by team leaders and managers, ensuring their staff maintain a consistent approach to managing these specific case types. Finally, valuable MI can be obtained, allowing for businesses to get a true handle on the impact and costs specific complaints have on the business.   Technology ensures staff members (with the right equipment) continue to do their jobs effectively, in these difficult circumstances.  As an established and trusted brand operating in the financial services sector, Worksmart provides a high-quality and market-leading complaints management solution to its clients. This webinar will provide CSA members with an overview of how technology can ensure a modern, robust, efficient and fit for purpose complaints and feedback management solution, which places the customer at the heart of the process, can be utilised.

Technology's vital role in enabling firms to meet the FCAs Complaints DISP rules

Many organisations are already focused on achieving digital automation to improve the customer experience within collections but there is an acceptance post-COVID that digital must accelerate.

We spoke to industry leaders across financial services, utilities, and government, in the UK, mainland Europe and South Africa, to find out how it’s being used and what benefits people are seeing. Join this webinar to find out the key findings from our extensive research and how digital could help transform your collections function, including:

• How evolved is the use of digital within collections
• Benchmarking
•	Digital payments
•	Chatbots
•	Omnichannel vs multichannel 
•	Data
•	Affordability

Digital can transform your collections function

Over the past 12 to 18 months, the insurance industry has changed significantly and the reputation of the industry or lack of, is now more evident than ever. In the last few months, you might have experienced;

a.Your insurance premium increasing, despite;
- You have another year with no claims; and/or
- Your sums insured and estimated turnover/wages reducing.

Or

b.Your current insurance broker having difficulty providing renewal terms for your Professional Indemnity and/or Directors & Officers Liability policies, citing most insurers are not willing to underwrite policies for FCA regulated Debt Collection businesses.

This webinar aims to;

a.Explain the reasons behind the premium increases;
b.Provide some explanation about why insurers are running away from FCA regulated companies; &
c.Provide some advice into what CSA Members can do to minimise the premium impact or delay with their renewal terms.

Insurance – The inside track

Presented by

About this talk

Credit Services Association (CSA)