Stories can’t exist without characters. Murat Ozcan, is one such who walks you through the challenges faced by every collection agent in the land of the Crescent Moon (Turkey). He has no resemblance to actual persons, living or dead.
Murat Ozcan is a collection agent in Turkey, a country with stunning geography that spans tranquil beaches to dramatic mountains. However, his work life wasn’t as spectacular. Ozcan works for an agency that helps Halk Bank (one of the largest PSU banks in the country) on receivables from all types of loans and credit cards. His organization’s key goal is simple and understandable – to reduce delinquencies and non-performing loans (NPLs) for Halk Bank.
Receivables, as anyone remotely involved in banking will know, can be very troublesome and costly, especially when the debtors are spread across the country. Locating each one of them, identifying their relationship with the bank and collecting payments from them was a laborious, sapping process. Particularly when there is very little context the agent has in his arsenal. Until recently, Halk Bank was managing its debt management process manually, which meant Ozcan needed to organize the list of customers to follow up on for the day based on their demography, then coordinate with them on their availability, even when keeping alive his targets and aligning his goals. Despite the hard work, the productivity of his organization was going down and delinquencies and NPLs continued to rise.
One fine day, as the summer sun rose over Ankara, Halk Bank chose to automate its debt management process. “We found Intellect Debt Solution to be functionally rich with faster implementation cycle and global practices. This strong value proposition made this our compelling choice. We believe this transformation initiative will ensure effective collection strategies for us and deliver value-driven experience to our customers”– Hasan Unal, Deputy General Manager, HalkBank.
And effective it proved to be. For starters, the Intellect collect system went live faster, much faster than anticipated. As far as rapid implementation goes, Intellect had already made a habit of it (read: Rapid Implementation – The Unicorn of Banking).
At the enterprise level, Halk Bank now uses highly structured data to improve its business capabilities – based on constant feedback to the origination process, thus fine tuning the process of customer acquisition team.
And Ozcan is now a new man. No longer an agent. He still works his old job, but in a way that is a welcome change for him, and a delight for his customers. He is now assigned with a pre-generated account list to follow during the day. He also gets structured data based on behavioural segmentation. Proactive follow-up, which was until then only an aspiration, became a daily possibility. From a collections agent, Ozcan has found purpose as a trusted advisor to his clients, who look to him to make informed decisions on repayment.
We believe this transformation initiative will ensure effective collection strategies for us and deliver value-driven experience to our customers –Hasan Unal
Deputy General Manager,HalkBank