There is a changing environment within the debt recovery industry, there is the obvious pressure that given the current economic climate, people have less and less money to spend. For debt recovery companies such as Wescot, this means that it takes relatively more time to recover debt for a client as customers are slower to repay. Factor in to this the fact that the industry has been placed under new guidelines from the Financial Conduct Authority who are demanding stricter rules for complaints management amongst other things, then Wescot and other debt recovery agencies have had to redevelop their operating procedures. This ultimately will result in retraining current staff and altering the training that new staff receive when they join Wescot.
Wescot are one of the largest debt recovery companies in the UK, with 650 employees who work in one of three locations, either Glasgow, Hull or Saltcoats in Western Scotland. Together the company processes 5 million individual debts and in order to change the running of a business as large as Wescot, their learning and development department has had to work hard in order to fall in line with the new regulations. One of the most important things that Wescot’s learning and development team has had to do is notify current and future clients of what the debt recovery company can actually achieve under the new laws. This has required the retraining of staff at Wescot, to uphold the company policy of focussing on the customers and clients of the company.
The learning and development team at Wescot have many combined years of experience in training employees. Mike Rustill alone has had twenty years in the business, including leading the training department at mobile phone giants, O2 and he brings his expertise and high skill level within learning and development. He has a proven track record at previous roles, not just at Wescot, at being able to perform at a senior operating level. In addition to Mike Rustill, the learning and development team of Wescot also contains Elaine MacDonald, a woman who has seven years in the financial industry, and after joining Wescot in 2003 as a collections agent, Elaine has been promoting to a senior role in the department. These are just a couple of examples of the highly skilled people that operate the learning and development team at Wescot, proving to customers that the training will in fact be effective in updating Wescot’s workforce.
recovery agency from the UK, that have recognised the need for continued development of their staff, not least because of the extraneous pressures placed on the company to update its processes.
hey carried out for Swift Advances to locate a number of the company’s former customers. Swift had given Wescot the task of tracing more than 2,000 customers who had already paid off their loans and were due to receive a small refund. The conclusion of the exercise saw the successful location of nearly 80% of the individuals concerned, which far exceeded the expectation that Swift Advances had at the start of the project. ‘Locate’ is just one of the many core services that Wescot Credit Services Ltd provide for their clients.
Wescot Credit Services Ltd are specialists at what they do and often exceed the expectations of their clients. One example of this can be seen in a project they carried out for Swift Advances. The goal was to locate more than 2,000 previous Swift customers who had already repaid their loans. The individuals involved were due to receive a small refund and therefore Swift wanted to track them down. Wescot, using their core range of ‘locate’ products and services, were able to successfully trace almost 80% of the past Swift customers. This far exceeded the expectations of Swift, who concluded the exercise as successful.
d over the last 40 years have established themselves as the number one provider of receivables management services in the country.
e who compile thousands of lists of data with regards to how much money individuals owe, to whom and how much more they can afford to borrow. Experian has recently developed a new system, entitled ExPin, with the objective of assisting third part companies in making the decision as to whether to lend more money or not.
