Many of the companies involved in consumer finance–like lenders, collection agencies, and healthcare revenue cycle management (RCM) companies–are struggling to run efficient operations on technology that was antiquated a decade ago.
AI is no longer a nice-to-have. AI is mission-critical to staying competitive and in business.
In some cases, companies have been hesitant to embrace modern AI-powered solutions because they were burned by investing in legacy tools that never delivered on their promises. Other times, organizations don’t know where to start or don’t fully understand how far AI has advanced in just the last few years – and how much value generative AI can deliver.
Before diving into the details of how Consumer Finance Intelligence and generative AI are transforming operations, let's make sure we’re all on the same page by defining these key terms.
What is Consumer Finance Intelligence?
If you’re not yet familiar with the term Consumer Finance Intelligence, don’t worry, it’s relatively new. Prodigal is pioneering this software category to deliver more value to our clients and partners, but we’ll get back to that. First, the simplest way to define Consumer Finance Intelligence is to break the term into two pieces.
Consumer Finance is the borrowing, saving, and investment choices that people (i.e., households) make. These choices include everything from auto, education, and personal loans to credit cards, mortgages, medical debts, and more.
Intelligence is a collection of information that has been organized and analyzed to reveal insights.
Putting everything back together, Consumer Finance Intelligence is a collection of consumer finance information that has been organized and analyzed to reveal insights. When it comes to revealing insights from once unorganized data, nothing is more effective than AI.
What is Generative AI?
Generative AI is artificial intelligence that can create (i.e., generate) something brand new. For example, you might have heard of generative AI that can take a prompt like “unicorn on the moon eating cake” and draw a picture of that exact scene. Or, maybe you know about generative AI that can write a unique poem based on a prompt like “silly haiku about frogs.”
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In Prodigal’s case, we harness generative AI to deliver the world’s first true Consumer Finance Intelligence, helping reduce operating costs and longstanding inefficiencies in the industry. We use generative AI to help both everyday people (i.e., consumers) and the organizations they interact with, like banks, auto financers, and healthcare providers. Let’s find out how.
How Prodigal Uses Generative AI
Prodigal built our AI specifically for consumer finance organizations, and honed its accuracy on more than 250 million industry-specific calls between agents and consumers. Our AI goes further than simply logging the literal words people say to truly understand the meaning and intention behind their words – just like a human.
During calls, Prodigal’s AI simultaneously evaluates company objectives, account data, context, and sentiment to generate prompts that guide agents to take the actions most likely to result in desired business outcomes. It’s like a superhuman coach that can keep every important detail in mind from every source at the same time, so it can always generate the absolute best guidance – no matter how complex the call may be.
After calls, Prodigal generates a concise summary of the conversation’s relevant events and outcomes within seconds, eliminating manual note taking. Unlike human notes, which may take too long to read, leave out important facts, and include confusing shorthand and abbreviations, the notes Prodigal generates are standardized and always include just the right level of detail.
How Prodigal’s Clients Benefit from Generative AI
The primary reasons agents use Prodigal’s generative AI during and after calls is to save time and increase quality. With AI generating dynamic prompts to guide them through calls, they can resolve issues faster, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce compliance risk.
When agents don’t have to write notes, they can focus on their customer’s needs during calls instead of splitting their attention between listening and typing notes. With all the time freed up by eliminating after call summarization, agents can also handle more calls every day.
The Credit and Lending Ecosystem is Broken
Prodigal saw that valuable consumer information is often scattered in bits and pieces across disjointed computer systems and various books of record. Best case, agents are typing account notes in nearly indecipherable shorthand. Worse case, agents are handwriting their call summaries and account data on physical sticky notes.
Consider a sample debt collection cycle:
- A creditor sends an outstanding debt to Collection Agency A
- After a while, the creditor tries placing the debt with Agency B instead
- Then, the creditor asks Agency C to try collecting the debt
- Eventually, the creditor sells the debt to a debt buyer
- Months later, after failing to collect, the debt buyer consults a law firm
- Finally, the law firm sues the debtor and wins a judgment
Historically, as a customer account moves throughout the credit and lending ecosystem, the account doesn’t become more detailed and accurate. Instead, critical information gets lost and forgotten at every step. This leaves it up to the company that inherits the account to waste time and money rediscovering information that was recorded months ago and should have been provided to them in the first place.
Consumers Suffer from a Broken Ecosystem Too
When people contact the companies servicing their mortgages, education loans, auto loans, and beyond, they can’t risk representatives giving them wrong or incomplete information. They also don’t have the time to keep calling back over and over because reps can’t address their concerns the first time.
Even if bills become overdue, the reality is, the majority of people actually want to pay back what they owe. Customers don’t want to keep getting calls from different companies they’ve never heard of asking them to re-verify their identity, re-explain how and when they want to be contacted, and justify for the fifth time why they’re unable to make a payment by a certain date.
Whether they were hit by an unexpected medical expense, lost their job, or even just bought a car beyond their means, getting out of debt is already overwhelming. Customers also know that a single misstep with the handling of their mortgage or other loans can throw their finances into chaos. The last thing anyone needs is extra friction caused by a horribly outdated credit and lending ecosystem. Prodigal created Consumer Finance Intelligence to remove that friction.
How Prodigal Delivers True Consumer Finance Intelligence
Prodigal is using technologies like generative AI to unite the fragmented credit and lending ecosystem. Our AI has learned from more than 250 million consumer finance calls, and continues to analyze eight million new calls every month. It never forgets a single detail (except for the personal identifiable information it purposely redacts).
Even for a person with superhuman memory, this would still be a flood of information. Prodigal’s AI analyzes everything, identifies what matters, and makes connections to deliver intelligence. This is what it really means for Prodigal to be a pioneer of Consumer Finance Intelligence. Prodigal is unlocking once lost insights to power generative AI applications that help our clients improve their business processes and strategies to reduce operating costs and compliance risk.
Consumer Finance Intelligence Also Benefits Consumers
Customers don’t care what’s going on “behind the scenes,” but they can tell when a company is easy to work with and empathic. Consumer Finance Intelligence helps ensure that whoever is contacting them is informed and compassionate and reaches them at the best time on their preferred contact method. Or, if they’re the one doing the contacting, it ensures the servicing rep they reach provides accurate information and handles their concern in one concise call.
Customers interacting with helpful and responsive loan servicers forge stronger relationships that lead to positive reviews, recommendations to friends, and lasting loyalty. For customers with debts, instead of rehashing (often sensitive and uncomfortable) information, they can collaborate with companies to schedule full payments or create payment plans. When customers know healthcare RCM companies, lenders, and collection agencies are working with them, they’re happy to pay back more in less time.
Learn More About Prodigal and Consumer Finance Intelligence
If you’re intrigued about how you can take the first step toward transforming your organization with Consumer Finance Intelligence from Prodigal, please contact us. Our experts are eager to share how you can benefit from technologies like generative AI to help your agents collect more, increase first-call resolutions, and boost customer satisfaction.
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