HFS Highlight: EXL PayMentor is taking debt collection digital

There’s always an element of risk for any kind of lending, which is why financial institutions must have efficient debt collection processes. However, the effectiveness of first-party collections, those attempted in the first 90 – 120 days, is inconsistent, expensive, and drives poor customer experience. The manually intensive process typically has staff attempting to collect debts on the phone, with multiple calls needed, while many are left unanswered before a payment is made – if indeed any are made at all… Recognizing this, EXL developed PayMentor, a modular solution that aims to streamline early-stage debt collection, and boost effectiveness.

EXL PayMentor aims to collect debt 10-20% faster and 10 – 30% more cost-effectively leveraging its omnichannel strategy to transform the early stages of the process.

EXL identified personalized early engagement, taking into account the right channel, tone, and frequency, as the key to improving debt collection effectiveness and delivering better customer experience. And they can prove it. The company has partnered with a large data aggregator to produce industry benchmarks demonstrating to lenders exactly how inefficient their current first-party collection practices are, how much debt they are writing off needlessly, and how much EXL PayMentor can help them.

The EXL PayMentor digital debt collection solution offers four modular components, allowing lenders to select which of the modules best suits their practice. These include:

1. Intelligence – an analytics engine with pre-built machine learning modules to help classify debtors and define the optimal collection strategy, covering both the communication strategy and the treatment options.
2. Digital Execution – a customer self-service portal and a customizable workflow for executing various types of digital communications, e.g. messaging, email and messenger
3. Human Execution – outsourced collections experts for inbound or outbound collections.
4. End-to-End Infrastructure – the whole enchilada – all of the above options packaged as one solution which can be implemented on the cloud or within a company’s IT infrastructure.

The solution offers pre-built machine learning models within the Intelligence module to jumpstart the journey of intelligent collections by defining collections persona categories and ideal channels. Once launched, any additional customer information gathered from interactions, including the weblogs of the Self-service portal and the deliverability data, is driven back into the system to continuously refine outcomes by the use of a self-learning algorithm called reinforcement learning. These automated interactions can coexist with phone-based practices to deliver the optimal omnichannel approach.  

PayMentor has a mostly outcome-based commercial model. EXL is initially targeting retail lending, insurance, and healthcare markets, however, the solution can easily be adjusted to other industries as well.

Bottom Line: Digital collections are becoming a must-have for lenders, but any new tech in this area needs flexibility, speed-to-market, efficient pricing models, and proven success rates. EXL PayMentor has thoughtfully delivered on this.

As we sit knee-deep in a global pandemic, teetering on the brink of a potential US recession, collections are an unfortunate reality. EXL, a veteran provider of analytics-led business process services with strong collection expertise, was on track to launch its productized digital collections solution for 2020 anyway, but the pandemic hastened its launch based on sheer customer need. Their modular solution allows enterprises to streamline their likely already somewhat inefficient first-party collections processes using digital technologies. Lenders looking to address their debt collection problems can turn towards EXL as a trusted partner and leverage PayMentor to drive down their operating costs while also boosting their collections rates, reducing the number of unpaid debts – something which could prove to be a critical boost of capital in such an uncertain time.