Many lending businesses involve their employees, more commonly the field collection executives, to head out for collections, whether it is for gathering borrower details, verifying documents, or ensuring compliance. For such operations, a robust collection management system would significantly streamline these processes. Clappia’s no-code platform offers a dynamic solution to create customized field data collection apps tailored to the unique needs of lending businesses. By integrating multiple features to create apps like loan origination, delinquency management, or automated credit scoring, you get a holistic lending management system. Let's delve into how Clappia can lend a hand in field data collection and enhance your business operations.
Field data collection in the lending industry involves gathering essential information from various locations, by field agents. With traditional methods, such as paper forms or manual data entry into spreadsheets, it is often inefficient and error-prone especially when there are a lot of procedures involved in transference of such data. A field agent would have to go out in the field, record the collections or other relevant data, come back, manually enter them into the system, set up another system for reminders, follow up for approvals and reminders etc. With Clappia, you can build efficient, customized apps that simplify these tasks, automate it and provide real-time insights.
There are different stages of collections and these stages are important to know for optimizing your business and improving its efficiency.
The Different Stages in Collections can be:
Customer Onboarding: where you capture customer details and set up their profiles in the system. Automated KYC (Know Your Customer) checks can be done here.
Payment Reminders: where you send automated reminders to customers for upcoming payments.
Field Visits: for scheduling and managing field visits for collections by the field agents.
Follow-up Actions: where there are automated follow-up actions based on the field visit outcomes. Having a delinquency management system can ensure timely follow-ups.
Debt Recovery: the final stages of recovering the loan amount through various means. Real-time fraud detection mechanisms can also be integrated during this stage to ensure data integrity.
Initial Contact: Field agents initiate contact with borrowers to gather preliminary information. This can include personal details, financial information, and initial document verification. Field agents can use apps that could be customizable forms, made in Clappia, to record this data accurately. Integrating e-signature capabilities can further streamline this process.
Data Collection: Agents collect detailed data using these customisable forms, which can include multiple types of fields to capture various information. This stage may involve filling out forms, taking photographs, and scanning documents. Clappia’s mobile app also has offline functionality that ensures that data can be collected even in remote locations with no internet connection. Including creditworthiness assessments and collateral verification within these forms can provide comprehensive data collection.
Verification: Collected data is verified in real-time using features such as GPS tracking, photo uploads or even using the AI feature in Clappia. For example, GPS data can confirm the location of a property or borrower, photos provide visual evidence of conditions or documents and the AI feature can check for crucial information. Real-time fraud detection mechanisms can also be integrated during this stage to ensure data integrity.
Data Integration: Once the loan data is collected, it is seamlessly integrated into the central system of Clappia using automated workflows. This ensures that all information is accurately recorded and easily accessible for further processing and analysis. Integration of delinquency management systems can ensure timely follow-ups.
Reporting and Analysis: Clappia’s analytics dashboard allows for real-time reporting and analysis. You can generate detailed reports to gain insights from the collected data, identify trends, and make informed decisions. This includes generating reports for loan performance analysis, portfolio risk assessment, etc.
Since there can be a lot of manual errors during field operations, Clappia offers a platform where you can simply create apps that eliminate manual errors and transfer of data that wastes a lot of time and resources. The use of automated loan servicing and integrated credit management systems reduces the chances of errors and improves efficiency. You do not need to worry about taking too long to create such apps either, as Clappia is a no-code platform that outrightly provides customisable fields for you to build your own app. You do not need any coding knowledge and with all the resources at your disposal, it does not take much time to build one.
Not only is it used for data collection, you can further automate the app to include your unique business process requirements such as including an approval hierarchy and process flow, or setting reminders based on dates captured in the app or even tracking field collection executives for safety reasons. Additionally, you can get automated reports, dashboards and PDFs from all the ongoing loans. The inclusion of loan amortization schedules and payment tracking features can enhance the overall utility of your system, providing comprehensive tools for managing loan repayments and tracking borrower performance as well and much more.
Clappia has some advanced features that make field collections even better:
We have already covered the key features which specify the technical benefits Clappia can offer, however, there are numerous practical benefits for field collections in the lending business. Here are some key advantages:
You can create a variety of apps tailored to specific needs within the field collection process. Here's how you can leverage Clappia for different types of field collections:
Customer MIS and Employee Beat Plan Apps: The integration of a Customer MIS app and an Employee Beat Plan app with a Visit Tracker ensures seamless data flow, consistency and accuracy. This setup helps in managing field visits efficiently, where the field agents can effectively pull up the required up-to-date data from multiple sources within one app itself.
Visit Tracker App Interface: The Visit Tracker app interface can include fields for capturing GPS location, customer details, visit details and collection details. This ensures comprehensive data capture that includes key metrics for loan monitoring.
Mobile App View: Field workers can access the app through the mobile app that functions offline, making it simple to manage their visits. Data captured on the mobile app immediately syncs with the web app and there is no extra setup required for the mobile app nor the offline function.
In Clappia, apart from having a simple app just dedicated to capturing field data, you can also create multiple other apps for other business processes that are related to it. For example, if you wish to maintain a payroll app, or a leave tracker, this will all be based on the field data collection app that you create. Once you create your field data collection app, you can then create these additional apps and integrate them together. It is easier to integrate them when all these apps are within one platform i.e. Clappia. You can use workflows or simply fetch data from other apps and use the information for any other app accordingly.
A lending company employing over 300 field workers faced challenges in managing EMI collections from customers efficiently. The traditional ways in which they possessed data and tracked their field workers, though time-consuming, proved to be full of errors. Therefore, the company had to come up with an efficient method of streamlining its operations so as to improve its productivity.
Inefficient Data Collection: Manually recording client visits and EMI collections was cumbersome and prone to mistakes.
Lack of Real-time Tracking: There was no effective way to track the field workers locations and movements at any given time.
Manual Follow-ups: Administrators had to manually remind field workers about follow-up visits, through calls, emails/messages or through shared spreadsheets, leading to delays and missed appointments.
Data Visibility: Limited information from field visits made it difficult for administrators to make sound judgments based on what they knew.
Clappia offered an all-encompassing solution by designing user-friendly mobile apps for use by the ground staff and web apps for management. The following features were included in these apps:
The implementation of Clappia's solution led to significant improvements:
Field data collection is critical for lending businesses, and Clappia offers a robust solution to streamline and enhance this process. By leveraging Clappia’s no-code platform, you can create custom apps tailored to your specific needs, ensuring accurate data collection, improved efficiency, and enhanced compliance. Sign up for Clappia today and revolutionize your field data collection process.
Whether you’re managing a small team of field agents or a large workforce, Clappia’s solutions are designed to meet your needs and help you stay ahead. Embrace the power of Clappia and transform how you collect and manage field collections in your lending business.
140L, 5th Main Rd, Sector 6, HSR Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560102, India
+91 96418 61031
3500 S DuPont Hwy, Dover,
Kent 19901, Delaware, USA
+1 (669) 732-9335
3500 S DuPont Hwy, Dover,
Kent 19901, Delaware, USA
+1 (669) 732-9335
140L, 5th Main Rd, Sector 6, HSR Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560102, India
+91 96418 61031