Fintech Impact

Summary:

In this 110th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host welcomes Ohad Samet, Co-founder and CEO of True Accord, to talk about leading with empathy even in debt collection, how True Accord’s debt collection model has impacted both creditors and debtors, and more.

Episode Highlights:

• 00:37: – True Accord is a machine learning-based digital debt collection platform used by creditors and financial institutions.
• 01:57: – Others often see people in debt either as villains or as victims.
• 05:00: – The majority of people have debt collection horror stories, but the people working as debt collectors aren’t bad people, but the way the industry is structured, they are incentivized to do things that create a bad experience.
• 05:55: – True Accord’s machine learning helps track user behavior to determine the best way to reach each customer and when to have human interaction versus digital intervention.
• 10:35: – At first, Ohad would get laughed out of offices and was being threatened by other creditors.
• 11:50: – Ohad sees True Accord as the payment provider for creditors.
• 13:15: – Traditional debt collection models pressure customers to pay as much as possible over the phone instead of committing to a payment plan that will actually work for them, so by working with the customer empathetically to find manageable payment plans that customers will actually stick to, True Accord sees higher rates of return.
• 14:41: – Their first communication with customers is always an email.
• 16:30: – True Accord fits to customer’s schedule both in terms of times that they can access the system to pay and what their individual cash flow is like.
• 19:50: – The biggest surprise for Ohad has been that their clients have been surprised by how few complaints they receive about their debt collection.
• 22:55: – True Accord could really only exist now because of how technologically enabled it is; the overhead would have been much too high several years ago.
• 24:33: – If Ohad could change one thing, it would be the mindset of some of the major financial institutions to make them care about user experience.
• 26:07: – The biggest challenge has been compliance.
• 27:48: – Ohad is most excited about the company’s Slack channel sharing compliments from customers.

3 Key Points

1. Providing a good user experience for debt collection benefits both brands and their customers.
2. Existing debt collection incentive structures encourage call center operators to be dehumanizing and lack compassion.
3. Machine learning technology is what has enabled intelligent communication with customers to happen on their terms.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “You have to have an empathetic approach to a complex issue, and you can solve it, you can help people end up on the good side of things.” –Ohad Samet
• “People come home after their second shift and they can engage with us and pay on their own terms, and that’s the important thing. Fitting to their payment periods, fitting to their unreliable cash flow, and that’s a lot of the negotiation.” –Ohad Samet
• “We needed to be in the right intersection between understanding compliance, caring about the problem, and knowing how to use technology to solve it.” –Ohad Samet

Resources Mentioned:

• Website – Jason Pereira’s Website
• Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
• LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
• FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact
• True Accord Website – https://www.trueaccord.com/
• Ohad Samet Website – https://www.ohadsamet.com/
• Ohad Samet Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/osamet
• Ohad Samet Twitter – https://twitter.com/ohadsamet

Full Transcript