- Big respite for borrowers as they no longer receive any harassment calls from the recovery agents appointed by NBFCs
Rezo’s AI-Driven ‘Collection’ Product for NBFC & BFSI sector is a departure from harassing/unruly calls by loan recovery agents
- Rezo’s Collection product treats borrowers as per past delinquency patterns and the size of owed debt thus creating a unique customer journey for each borrower
- The product gives borrowers a consistent customer experience and helps NBFCs keep their brand loyalty intact, creating a win-win scenario
- RBI data shows more than 12000 complaints of harassment by loan recovery agents.
- Complaints of harassment have increased by 3 folds as per the RBI statistics.
New Delhi, 12th April 2023. The AI-driven ‘Collection Product’ of Rezo.ai, has turned the loan recovery process into a pleasant consistent customer experience for borrowers, bringing relief from unruly agents and harassing calls from them. Rezo’s AI-powered Voice and analytics solutions have already disrupted the way Indian businesses engage customers. The ‘Collection Product’, designed specifically for the NBFC & BFSI sector, is a departure from the conventional human intervention during loan recovery that often includes unruly verbose on the lender’s side, which often also goes beyond all the moral limits, impacting not only the customer experience but also brand loyalty.
The high-handedness used by loan recovery agents and the tightening of regulatory norms by RBI around it was proving detrimental to the efficient recovery of loans. The brunt of the decentralised approach and multi 3rd party liaising was largely faced by the customers/ borrowers. Recovery agents would not only call borrowers multiple times, in many instances even when the due has been settled, but would also often resort to counter-productive language. According to statistics from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), between January 1, 2021, and November 30, 2022, a total of 12,903 “complaints of harassment’ by recovery agents have been received, which is three times the number of complaints recorded in the same period the previous year, under the Integrated Ombudsman Scheme of RBI.
Rezo’s Auto-Engage Product offers AI-driven human-like conversations with the ability to handle more than 10 languages and over 500 dialects. The ‘Collection Product’ analyses every borrower’s profile and payment delay reasons to classify them based on the future risk of missing payments. By analysing the reasons behind missed payments, it can also predict the delinquency pattern of borrowers. Rezo’s Collection Product then devices different types of highly innovative and tailored customer conversation and creates a unique customer journey for each & every borrower. Other than delinquency patterns, the AI-driven product also takes into account the size of the owed debt, in stark contrast to persuasion by human agents with no knowledge of either the borrowers’ previous record or the size of the debt.
Sharing insights on the development, Mr 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, Ms 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.”
Since the Covid pandemic, the default rate in NBFCs had increased 2 folds. Instances of harassment and controversial high-handedness by recovery agencies forced RBI to tighten the regulatory norms. This made having an effective communication tool to remind borrowers of their delinquency in their preferred language and dialect and make the process customer or borrower friendly necessary.
