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Ascent increases customer knowledge with major Callcredit data partnership deal

Ascent Performance Group [1], one of the UK’s leading specialist recovery law firms, has entered into a deal with Callcredit Information Group to obtain in-depth credit data to boost its understanding of customers’ financial situations.

The partnership with Callcredit will form part of a wider plan to adopt a market leading customer-focused approach.

Based on a mix of credit data and internal Ascent insight, Callcredit have developed scorecards that provide a highly accurate picture of customers’ financial situations. These predict if customers are likely to pay, if they are likely to pay in the collections or litigation stage, or if payment is likely to be received pre or post enforcement.

By having a deeper understanding of their customers’ financial behaviours, Ascent will be able to identify those customers with a high propensity to pay. In turn, this will increase operational efficiencies and allow staff resource to be effectively managed.

John Haywood, Chief Operating Officer – Recoveries, at Ascent said: “By having a deeper understanding of a customer’s debt history, this new data driven approach will help us treat customers fairly. For example, a smart feature of the system will involve access to time series data, which will allow us to quickly analyse the customer payment/balance history. This will then provide a useful historical context that will help steer customer conversations in the right direction.”

As part of the partnership, dashboards which highlight customers’ financial products, history of indebtedness and outgoing payments have also been created. Accessible to all agents, they will become an indispensible tool, helping to improve the setting up of sustainable repayment plans when speaking to customers.

James Connolly, Senior Business Development Manager at Callcredit, added: “By working closely the Ascent team it was clear that their directive was to build a series of predictive propensity to pay and litigation models, deployed at various, key stages within their collection and litigation strategy. Callcredit are extremely pleased to be working closely with Ascent, delivering scorecards and highly predictive data in real time to enable them to optimise their strategy and overall performance. We look forward to supporting Ascent with our data, consultancy and expertise over the coming years.”