All use cases

Collect / Recover

Lending collections and promise-to-pay

A borrower has slipped from late to overdue — handle the next call well and you recover the arrears and keep them; handle it like a debt-chase and you lose both.

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What it does

Lending collections is high-volume, heavily regulated, and the fastest way to turn a recoverable customer into a charge-off and a complaint. Call-center scripts apply the same pressure to everyone, miss the borrower who is genuinely struggling, and leave no record of what was said last time — and every misstep is FCA, Consumer-Duty, and FDCPA exposure. The agent runs the arrears arc from pre-delinquency to overdue: outbound promise-to-pay contacts with identity verification, a plain account of the balance and what happens next, and a concrete way out — settle today via a secure payment link, commit to a structured plan, or take a late-fee waiver for paying now. It takes inbound collection callbacks with the full account in front of it, and the moment it hears hardship it stops collecting and switches to a vulnerability path: gathering income and expenditure, then routing to forbearance for a human to approve.

How it works

  1. 1
    Trigger. a loan account crosses an arrears threshold — a missed or partial payment, days-past-due, a broken promise-to-pay, or a pre-delinquency risk score — or an inbound collections callback arrives.
  2. 2
    Decision. the agent reads the account — outstanding balance, arrears state, payment and contact history, prior promises, affordability and vulnerability flags — and checks contact windows, frequency caps, and required disclosures against the lending-compliance policy; a judge gates every outbound contact before it goes.
  3. 3
    Action. an outbound call or message opens with identity verification, states the balance and consequences in plain language, and offers the resolution menu — pay today via a secure link to the lender's hosted payment step, agree a structured plan, or take the late-fee waiver for settling now. Each promise-to-pay is recorded with an amount and a date.
  4. 4
    Follow-through. callback cadences are scheduled and kept; kept and broken promises are tracked and chased; affordability or vulnerability language routes to the income-and-expenditure sub-procedure with a human approving any forbearance or restructure; inbound callbacks land with full context; if payment arrives on its own, pending outreach is cancelled; every contact, disclosure, and commitment writes back to a full audit trail.
Example
AgentThanks, you're verified. I'm calling about your loan — last month's payment of £180 didn't go through, so the account's now in arrears. If you can clear it today I'll waive the late fee. I can send a secure payment link, or we can spread it over a plan. What works for you?
CustomerI can't do the full amount. I've had my hours cut at work.
AgentThank you for telling me — let's not push it then. I'll ask a few questions about your income and outgoings so our team can look at a payment holiday or a lower arrangement, and I'll pause collections activity while we sort it. Is now a good time to go through that?

Configuration

How the agent is wired for this use case.

Triggeran account_in_arrears event from the loan servicing system (missed or partial payment, days-past-due, broken promise-to-pay), a pre-delinquency risk score, or an inbound collections callback.
Tools & actions
  • Loan servicing system · verify identity, retrieve balance, arrears state, payment and promise history; write back promises, plans, and arrangements.
  • Compliance policy engine · enforce contact windows, frequency caps, and the disclosures FCA / Consumer-Duty / FDCPA require before each contact.
  • Payment provider · hand off to the lender's secure hosted payment step for a same-day payment or a plan instalment (the agent never touches card data).
  • Arrangement engine · set up a structured plan or apply a late-fee waiver within policy and schedule callback cadences.
  • Hardship / vulnerability workflow · gather income and expenditure and route a forbearance or restructure recommendation to a human for approval.
  • CRM / audit log · record every contact, disclosure, promise, and commitment for the regulatory trail.
Autonomyoutbound promise-to-pay, plan setup, and waiver offers run unattended under judge gating and within compliance policy; the payment is a money-moving policy class completed only on the lender's hosted step; any forbearance, restructure, or write-off is approved by a human, and vulnerability detection always hands off.
Channelsvoice · sms · email · chat
Escalationa hardship or vulnerability signal, a dispute, a complaint, a request outside policy, or any forbearance decision hands off to a collections specialist with the full account context.

What you need

The inputs this use case runs on. Your channels stay yours; the agent supplies the judgment.

Signals

arrears events (payment_missed, partial-payment, days-past-due thresholds), broken promise-to-pay, pre-delinquency risk scores, inbound callback requests.

Data

outstanding balance and arrears state, payment and contact history, prior promises and arrangements, affordability and vulnerability flags, consent and contact-window preferences.

Guardrails

FCA / Consumer-Duty / FDCPA rules encoded as policy — contact windows, frequency caps, required disclosures; identity verification before any account detail; judge gating on every outbound contact; hardship detection with human-approved forbearance only; stale-outreach cancellation on payment; a complete audit trail of every contact.

Metrics it moves

  • recovered-revenueoverdue balances resolve as same-day payments or kept arrangements instead of aging into write-offs and external agencies, at a fraction of a human collections team's cost per contact.
  • conversion-rateidentity, a plain explanation, and a concrete way out turn more arrears contacts into a recorded payment commitment than a pressure script; a published lending-agent deployment in this category records a promise-to-pay on roughly 60% of contacts.
  • reactivation-rateborrowers who re-engage and return to performing instead of going dark, recovered before the account is handed to an external agency.

Related use cases

Collect / Recover

Compliant collections and promise-to-pay

the cross-industry parent this lending variant specializes

Retain / Save

Lending arrears hardship and forbearance save

the retain-side path before an account reaches formal collections

Collect / Recover

Patient-billing collections and payment plans

the healthcare sibling with its own medical-billing rules

See it on your own customer journey

Bring one drop-off, one churn cliff, or one silent segment. We will show you what a proactive agent with memory and judgment does with it.

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