Two pioneering companies in the payments and collections field have joined forces to help tackle South Africa's consumer debt problem.
Emerging Market Payments (EMP) recently partnered with Collections Marketing Centre (CMC) to help companies manage customers in arrears and enable individuals to take control of their instalment schedules, aiming to improve collections rates.
As consumer debt in South Africa continues to rise, many companies are also being affected as customers fail to settle their bills and ignore repeated requests to pay. According to South Africa's National Credit Regulator, which is trying to eliminate risky lending levels, nearly half of all consumers are at least three months behind on debt instalments.
Many organisations in South Africa which extend credit, including banks, retailers, personal loan companies and local government entities are using outdated legacy collection systems to manage outstanding customer debts. As such, EMP and CMC will be providing these types of organisations with the most advanced arrears management and collections solutions available today, which is expected to result in a huge improvement in collection rates, as well as improving the customer experience.
CMC's cloud-based enterprise collections solution will work on consolidating all credit-related communications, including phone calls, Web visits, e-mails, texts, and letters between relevant organisations and their customers into a single dialogue. This enables organisations to adopt a far more targeted, personalised, and responsive approach while engaging with customers in default.
Mike Crawley, CEO at EMP Southern Africa, says: 'Increasing debt levels in South Africa are affecting the viability of many businesses which must explore every technique available to recoup payments. Enabling customers to self-cure is a straightforward and proven way to improve collections rates. CMC's FlexCollect brings best-of-breed, proven technology to Africa's lenders.'
CMC's FlexCollect includes a self-service system which enables people in arrears to manage their own instalment schedules online. Accordingly, eliminating the need to contact a call centre improves response rates and allows customers to manage their affairs in a less stressful way - all the while reducing the costs of running a call centre.
Vytas Kisielius, CEO of CMC, said: 'People feel more in control if they are able to set up and manage their own instalments schedule online whenever is convenient for them, or to speak with an agent if they so choose and get identical payment programme options. This empowerment improves collections rates across all sectors. Clearly there is an extremely worrying debt problem in South Africa, and we are able to help companies whose businesses are being affected.'
CMC's FlexCollect will be hosted by EMP and closely integrated with its account processing platform. The solution will also be available to lenders who are not processed on the EMP platform.
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