Westlake Financial Services has made some strategic shifts at its collections centers in order to lower delinquencies and losses as well as improve the lender’s relationships with its borrowers, Brian Renfro, senior vice president of servicing, told Auto Finance News.
Renfro was hired in March to lead these changes and was able to hit the ground running because he held the same position at Westlake from 2005 to 2007 before leaving to join Navient Corp.
“We know that the good months are behind us and we’re headed into the tougher months, so we’re trying to shore up our strategies and make sure that we’re putting some new things in place,” he said. “We revamped the agent incentive plan to tie into what we’re trying to achieve, we’re using the dialer more effectively, and we went to a queuing-ownership model for the later stage reps so they understand what it is they are doing.”
Renfro’s background is in dialer operations, and one of the first changes he made at Westlake was to utilize dialers more in the late stages of delinquency. Westlake had gotten away from using dialers late in the delinquency, but Renfro believes it can be done while also improving borrower relationships with the lender.
“We need to get back to using the dialer to get account penetration,” he said. “I can use some of the dialer strategies I’ve learned along the way and bring that to the table here and making sure our strategies are successful, efficient, and compliant at the same time.”
The company also switched to an “account queuing” or “account ownership” model for its collections agents, which is meant to personalize agents to the borrower’s specific financial situation so that a resolution can better be achieved.
“It allows them to understand the account they are dealing with, and instills a vested interest because they have ownership and they get to understand and know the borrower’s situation,” he said. “I think us getting more skilled at working those queues is going to help us and that’s something all the way down to the agent level that’s new to folks.”
