The consumer desire for a brighter Christmas amidst continuing Covid-19 restrictions has seen a sharp rise in ‘buy now pay later’ schemes, and with furlough ending and depression rates rising, a perfect storm lies ahead for all collections teams as consumers juggle multiple payment demands.

Telecoms organisations face a highly challenging business environment as digitisation continues to fuel the relentless disruption of established business models and practices, to enable increasing competition from new, more agile, entrants and forces constant regulatory changes as the market grapples with the societal shift to living and conducting business online.

The second year of the pandemic has seen more people in the UK slide further into debt and organisations need to recalibrate their response through empathetic collections.

You don’t have to be involved in collections to be aware that the last 18 months have affected the financial circumstances of a huge number of people.

Despite heavy investment into tech firms, the country has been one of the poorest performing G7 nations in the decade or so since the global financial crisis of 2008-09, when what had been a steady rise in productivity began to flatline.

As the UK starts to look for ways to boost the economy and kick-start recovery from Covid-19, could part of the answer lie in unlocking the untapped value of public sector knowledge assets?

Christmas may well have come early in the FCA’s Consumer Duty feedback and consultation paper with more meaningful proposals for firms in the pursuit of delivering benefits for consumers. There’s not much detail in the underpinning cost/benefit analysis, but with only a nine-month implementation timescale, the New Year may well bring a costly hangover if firms aren’t preparing now.

Is your organisation ready for human-centred collections?

During 2021, the Capita Institute is asking senior decision-makers critical questions relating to the state of their organisations as we emerge from the pandemic.

Download our government venturing report to understand the seven key steps for unlocking the value of public sector knowledge assets.