Balancing customer outcomes with commercial risks
Firms must ensure they are well equipped to deal with customers, especially those in arrears, who are experiencing financial distress. Huntswood is here to give you confidence in your arrears handling and collections processes, ensuring that they are appropriate and aligned to regulatory requirements, industry best practice and delivering good outcomes for customers. We're here to provide the support you need to drive increased payments / commitments to pay, operational excellence and cost efficiencies in a manner that protects customers.
How Huntswood can help
Our regulatory experts have a deep understanding of the priorities of the regulator, and its future direction of travel. We use this expertise to provide a comprehensive health check of your current operations, including a regulatory gap analysis, as well as peer benchmarking with full recommendations to ensure you are delivering in line with your regulator’s expectations.
We can support your firm in implementing improvements to your approach, from policy and process design to a full implementation of a new target operating model with all of the training and governance elements required.
Our industry-leading resourcing and recruitment platform can also ensure your business has the trained, vetted and high-quality people you need to carry out complex operations and manage high volumes of customer contact.
TESTING OUTCOMES IS KEY TO EVIDENCING A TAILORED AND EFFECTIVE APPROACH
When consumers find themselves in a collections or recoveries situation, testing outcomes becomes all the more important.
Huntswood usually segments its outcomes testing methodology into the following key areas for collections and recoveries (matching the typical stages in a customer’s journey towards a collections situation). Example questions posed at each stage are outlined below:
Identification
Was financial difficulty identified at the earliest opportunity?
Understand
Is up-to-date income and expenditure information held?
Personalise
Was the solution proposed / deployed personalised to the customer?
Communicate
Was the customer given the opportunity to enter into constructive dialogue?
Judgement
Did the handler exercise sufficient judgement in seeking to agree the best way forward?
Why Huntswood
- With decades’ worth of experience in dealing with vulnerable customers, we’re absolutely dedicated to delivering good outcomes for consumers in financial difficulties
- We can provide assurance that your arrears handling and collections processes adhere to regulatory requirements
- We’ll implement a streamlined process that reduces your firm’s operational and reputational risks, as well as potential redress costs
Related Content
Customer service
Support your customers in a timely fashion, deliver good outcomes and benefit your business
Customer contact centres
Eliminate the contact centre queue and see customer satisfaction rise as a result
Operational Processing
Ensuring you have the processes and controls to successfully manage surges in activity
Vulnerable Customers
Identify and protect customers in vulnerable circumstances
Latest Insights
Vulnerable customers
FCA releases its review on the treatment of vulnerable customers
Following the FCA's March 2025 announcement, and with the regulator's vulnerability work ongoing, what should firms be doing to better protect their vulnerable customers and ensure they are not falling short of expectations?
Remediation
A road less travelled: assessing your remediation approach
What are the underlying elements of a good remediation approach, and how can firms make their general response to customer issues more efficient, while understanding when to call on the support of a specialist?
General regulation
Ongoing advice and the FCA – firms must continue to prepare
What does the recent FCA announcement around ongoing advice mean for firms? Here we look at common areas of poor practice and practical steps firms can take now to stay ahead of the FCA’s work
Complaints Calculator
Understand the true costs and opportunities within complaint handling.
SIGN UP FOR REGULAR INSIGHT
Keeping up-to-date with the latest industry topics and regulatory issues can be quite time-consuming!
Thankfully, our regulatory experts are here to help you stay on top of it all. Fill in the short form below to receive a monthly round-up of our insight, news and analysis.