Debt Collection? HelloDuty + Microfinance Institutions (MFI).

The most complicated task at any Microfinance institution is debt collection.

Microfinance institutions (MFI’s) are formed as vehicles to provide financial services to the middle and poorer segments of society. In Kenya, they occupy the seat between banks and SACCOs and are actually regulated by the central bank of Kenya as banks. Whereas in the past microfinance institutions were set up in small communities, today’s MFI’s reach the mass market.

The target market, poor and lower middle class, exposes MFI’s to higher loan delinquency than other banking institutions. When this was at the local community level, collection was simpler than it is today. Today, it’s not rare to find a common need for a collection department in one. Their customers need a constant reminder to pay up. Unfortunately a contact centres does not come cheap.

Let’s discuss how you can set up a secure collection centre using helloduty + Salesforce (Optional) as your CRM.

Current issues

After having discussions with multiple clients that are considering HelloDuty as a solution, these are the top 3 issues we have identified.

Lack of security.

The Data Protection Act law came in force earlier this year. The law brings heavy repercussions to an MFI found breaking them. They could easily lose reputation if not the banking license.

In haste to collect, MFI’s might have been too lux as to how their agents access and use customer data. With collection agents having one of the highest churn rates, they may sometimes be poorly vetted. Their direct access to sensitive customer information or core banking systems might be a cheap solution that will soon come at a high price.

High cost.

Since contact centres require physical labour, the high cost stretches beyond acquiring the hardware and the software. Cost does not always necessarily have to be what you are paying to acquire the system. It also involves the time taken to go live, training, opportunity cost and most importantly rollback.

Improper communication.

In order to reduce loan delinquencies, MFI’s integrate the use of SMS to remind their clients of the due debt. While the action is good, the channel is archaic. In a certain day and age, SMS would have easily drawn attention, today, its simple to block or ignore them. it's difficult to determine if it was read or ignored. In most cases, there is no acknowledgement that it was actually delivered.

Solutions

Guaranteed security.

With our out of the box contact centre integration with Salesforce, an agent is able to access a 360 degree customer view based on their role without always having access to all the customer data.

The information does not have to be mastered in Salesforce. The data can be fetched in real-time from your core-banking systems like Mambu or Elma and displayed to the agent in real-time.

When required, an audit trail can be provided that will show what data was accessed, when and by whom. Data can also be partially masked so that the agent only sees the relevant pieces required for their function. e.g instead of displaying the phone number 072000000, the data can be masked to 0720***000 and should the agent wish to view more, that engagement too can be recorded.

Lower cost.

A plug and play solution means that the product is pre-designed around your systems to easily go live without interference and guess work. Its like a prefabricated bridge that is simple brought to site and installed and you are ready to go.

Guided communication

The sales team may refer to this as a marketing funnel. Today, customers have very short attention spans. Every piece of messaging needs to be properly targeted and its impact measured.

The entrance of robocalls is able to alleviate most of this worry. A phone call is more likely to bring attention than an SMS can. With HelloDuty AI, each phone call can easily be personalized to sound human-like.

Our systems can measure if a call was answered, how long the call lasted and using IVR, quick follow up actions can be performed to determine if the message was received. e.g

Hello Kamau, am calling you from Our MFI to remind you of the 5000 debt that is due tomorrow. To pay now, please press 1 (Upon wich the MPESA stk is popped) or stay on the line to speak to one of our agents

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