Rezo.ai’s AI-powered ‘Collection Solution’ has transformed the loan recovery process into a pleasant consistent customer experience for borrowers, freeing them from rowdy agents and pestering calls. Rezo’s AI-powered voice and analytics solutions have already revolutionised the way Indian businesses interact with their customers. The ‘Collection Product,’ designed specifically for the NBFC and BFSI sectors, is a departure from traditional human intervention during loan recovery, which frequently includes unruly verbosity on the lender’s side, which often also goes beyond all moral limits, affecting not only the customer experience but also brand loyalty.
The aggressiveness of loan collection agents, as well as the tightening of regulatory criteria by the RBI, were proving harmful to the efficient recovery of debts. Customers/borrowers bore the burden of the decentralised strategy and multi-third-party interfacing. Recovery agents would not only phone borrowers several times, even after the debt was cleared, but they would also frequently use derogatory language. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) statistics, a total of 12,903 “complaints of harassment” by recovery agents were received between January 1, 2021, and November 30, 2022, which is three times the number of complaints recorded in the same period the previous year, under the RBI’s Integrated Ombudsman Scheme.
Rezo’s Auto-Engage Solution provides AI-driven human-like conversations in more than ten languages and 500 dialects. The ‘Collection Product’ analyses each borrower’s profile and payment delay reasons in order to categorise them based on the risk of missing payments in the future. It can forecast debtors’ delinquency patterns by analysing the reasons for missed payments. Rezo‘s Collection Product then provides a unique customer experience for each and every borrower by deploying several sorts of highly inventive and targeted customer conversations. In addition to delinquent trends, the AI-driven product considers the magnitude of the outstanding debt, in contrast to human agents who have no knowledge of either the borrowers’ previous record or the size of the loan.
Sharing insights on the development, Manish Gupta, Co-founder and CEO said: “We are excited to see that our product is making a vital change in the end-to-end customer experience for borrowers and is providing people with debt respite from harassment and misconducts by unruly agents. From onboarding to the post-withdrawal of loans, a consistent customer experience will prove to be virtuous for borrowers in terms of brand loyalty. Rezo’s experience in providing a transformative customer experience and analysing customer interactions at scale has come in handy while designing our collection production. We have already helped a Financial services leader- with a book size of more than 10 billion USD and a customer base of more than 15 million- achieve up to a 10% jump in collection efficiency.”
Speaking on the idea of augmenting customer experience during loan recovery, Rashi Gupta, Chief Data Scientist, Rezo.ai, said: “Our initial research suggested that borrowers’ reasons for missing payments can range from a current lack of funds to forgetfulness to wilful default. Additionally, customers experienced a particular pain point vis-à-vis how lenders pursued them. Of dread of harassment and maltreatment, many customers avoided speaking with a human recovery agent. The goal was to come up with a unique and personalised method for getting debts back from borrowers. Each cause needed to be addressed differently, which necessitated developing a special customer journey. In order to ensure that borrowers are reminded of their responsibilities without being harassed, our Collection Product envisions a complete overhaul of the loan recovery process.”
The default rate in NBFCs has grown double after the Covid epidemic. Cases of harassment and contentious high-handedness by recovery agencies compelled the RBI to strengthen regulatory standards. This necessitated the use of an efficient communication tool to remind borrowers of their delinquency in their preferred language and dialect, as well as to make the process consumer or borrower friendly.
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