Assemble what is known about an account in arrears, work out which forbearance options fit the circumstances and hand a collections officer a case — the arrangement and the contact stay with a person.
Assemble the account as it stands — the arrears stage, the charges applied, the promises kept and broken.
02
Take in what the customer has already supplied about their situation, in the words and figures they used.
Reason
03
Build the affordability picture from those figures alone, on the income-and-expenditure standard your team uses.
04
Set the circumstances against the forbearance your policy offers, and name which options fit and which do not.
05
Check the account for a stop already in force — insolvency, bereavement, a debt adviser at work, a refused channel.
Decide
06
Route ill health, bereavement, domestic or economic abuse and mental-health disclosure to a named specialist.
07
Flag where the contact rules leave no room — the frequency spent, the hour, the channel or a stop in force.
Out
08
Hand the collections officer a case — the position, the affordability picture, the options that fit, what is missing.
09
Retain what was read, what was proposed, what the officer changed, and every contact attempted with its result.
→Product statement
The agent assembles, works out and hands over. Agreeing or varying an arrangement, deciding what a customer can afford, contacting a customer in arrears and any default or termination notice stay with named bank staff.
Example workflow
One account in arrears, end to end
AgentHuman
1Account enters arrearsA missed payment, a broken arrangement, or a customer telling you they are in difficulty
2Position assembledArrears stage, charges applied, prior arrangements, promises kept and broken, and every contact already made
3Circumstances readWhat the customer supplied — income, essential costs, dependants — and anything they disclosed about their situation
4Options and limits worked outWhich forbearance fits on your own policy, what contact the rules still allow, and any stop already in force
No human action required
Stages 1 to 4 run before an officer opens the case — the position, the circumstances, the options and the limits are worked out first. Nothing in that stretch calls a customer, writes to one or sets an arrangement.
5DecisionSplits on what was disclosed and how complete the picture is
Picture complete, nothing disclosed
Reaches the collections officer ready to work.
Disclosure made, or picture thin
Goes to the specialist team ahead of the queue.
Collections officer
Reads the arrears position, the affordability picture, the options that fit and what is missing, then decides what may be offered and makes the contact.
Open · Correct · Refer to specialist
Officer decided — handed back▼
6Officer decides, agent recordsOnly what a named person authorised — the arrangement, the wording and the contact — written where access and policy allow
7Outcome evaluatedOptions named against options offered, disclosures routed on time, contact inside the limits, and cases rebuilt
Referrals
A disclosure the officer catches and the agent did not counts as a failure.
What should not run autonomously
Human approval stays in control
Outside the boundary — human approval required8 items
Agreeing, varying or ending an arrangement.
Deferring, reducing or writing off what is owed.
Contacting a customer in arrears.
Deciding what a customer can afford to pay.
Automation boundaryAgent acts unaided
✓Assemble the arrears position, the charges applied and the contact already made.
✓Build the affordability picture from what was supplied.
✓Name which forbearance options the circumstances actually fit, and what is missing.
✓Route a disclosure straight to the specialist team.
Write actions run only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation. Contacting a customer is not one.
Issuing a default, termination or enforcement notice.
Handling a disclosure of abuse, illness or bereavement.
Reporting an arrangement to a credit reference agency.
Changing contact limits, hardship rules or routing triggers.
Example output
One account in arrears, annotated
Everything the agent proposes is attached to the account and the circumstances it came from.
Collections case · single accountIllustrative example
Position
Customer says
Last contact
Options that fit
Confidence
Arrangement
Three payments behind
Hours cut, one earner
Day 9, letter
Reduced payment, or a pause
88%
Not set by the agent
As receivedThe position from your systems and the customer's own account of it — nothing on this side is inferred.
Evidence usedIncome and costs suppliedTwo arrangements brokenCharges applied to date
Why these two and not othersBoth fit the policy and the figures the customer gave. A term change does not.
ActionOpenCorrectRefer to specialist
What the score decidesHow much the officer must establish first — never what the customer can afford.
Value
Where AI adds value
The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.
Where the value landsValue 01 – 04
Every account in arrearsMissed payments, broken plans and hardship contacts
03Options & limits
Match circumstances to options
Set what the customer has told you against the forbearance your policy actually offers, the contact rules that bind, and any stop already in force.
01Approved path
Have the case ready before the call
The arrears position, the affordability picture and the options that fit arrive together, so the officer is not assembling them while the customer waits.
02Human review
Route a disclosure out of collections
Ill health, bereavement, abuse and mental-health disclosure are routed to a named specialist, and what may travel with the disclosure is set in advance.
04Build an evidence trail
Retain the position assembled, the figures the customer gave, the options named, the officer's decision and every contact attempted — on both paths.
Integrations
Typical integrations
Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.
Collections & servicingFIS · Fiserv · Jack Henry Temenos · collections platforms
Hardship & arrangementsArrangement records · hardship forms Debt-adviser referrals · breathing space
Customer contactDialler and contact history · letters SMS and email · Consent records
Agent
Collections & hardship support
Assembles the position Names the options Routes disclosures
A single missed payment on a salaried account is largely a records question. The failures land on households whose income moves every month, and on debt one party never chose. Nestack reports by slice, not only in total.
Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregateIllustrative example
Slice
Failure rate
Lift
Lift vs. threshold
Status
Coerced and joint-debt cases
5.6%
3.7×
Review
Variable and seasonal income
3.8%
2.5×
Review
Newly acquired portfolios
2.7%
1.8×
Watch
First missed payment, salaried
1.2%
0.8×
Normal
Bar: mis-prepared-case lift vs. first-arrears baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold2 of 4 slices over threshold
Evidence-linked improvement
A broken arrangement is evidence, not a verdict
An arrangement that fails may have been the wrong one, or the only one anybody named. Only the record of what was offered tells you which.
Improvement cycle · five stagesSwitchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn
01Detect
Broken arrangements, complaints or contact outside the limits move in one cohort.
02Diagnose
Isolated to the position gathered, the income figures used, the eligibility rules or the disclosure routing.
03Improve
The change is signed off by the collections lead and the vulnerability team, then version-linked.
04Verify
Tested against cases already closed, and against the disclosures the agent walked past.
05Learn
The wording nobody acted on is written into the vulnerability list, and the case is kept beside it.
Learn → DetectThe return edge. Whether an option was the right one is known months later, so each cycle re-reads cases the last one had already closed.
Typical build scope
Twelve workstreams across six weeks
The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, the arrears position, affordability and options, evaluation, the officer queue, then production validation and handover.
WorkstreamWeek 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6
01Arrears discovery and boundary definition.
02Collections and servicing system assessment.
03Hardship policy and forbearance option map.
04Arrears position and charge-history assembly.
05Affordability capture on your own standard.
06Option eligibility rules and exclusions.
07Vulnerability routing and specialist team handover.
08Contact-limit rules and stop-flag checks.
09Officer gate, wording and approval controls.
10Slice evaluation suite and arrears regression cases.
11Collections-queue and case-note integration.
12Observability, deployment and Agent Care handover.
12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallelFinal scope and sequence confirmed in discovery
Engagement tiers
What each tier includes
Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.
Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tierPilotOne product, one arrears stageProductionProduction collections integrationAdvancedMulti-entity / acquired books
Introduced at Pilot
Arrears position and affordability picture✓✓✓
Options named against your own policy✓✓✓
Disclosure routed to a named specialist✓✓✓
Contact limits, stops and an officer gate✓✓✓
Audit trail of options and contact✓✓✓
Baseline evaluation✓✓✓
Introduced at Production
Additional products and arrears stages—✓✓
Collections-queue and letter integration—✓✓
Observability and evaluation—✓✓
Introduced at Advanced
Multi-entity and acquired portfolios——✓
High volume and additional languages——✓
Build priceFrom $5,000From $8,000Custom quote
Final build priceConfirmed after discovery based on the products and arrears stages in scope, collections and servicing integrations, contact channels, case volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
Separate from buildBuild pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.
What we need from you
What you bring, and what we build with it
Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.
You bringWe build with it
01How an account reaches collections, and the options you offer→Arrears discovery and forbearance option mapWeek 1
02Access to the collections, servicing and contact systems→Collections and servicing system assessment, then integrationWeek 2
03The income-and-expenditure standard your team works to→Affordability capture on your own standardWeek 2
04Your vulnerability list, and who a disclosure must reach→Vulnerability routing and specialist handoverWeek 3
05Your contact rules, and the stops that override them→Contact-limit rules and stop-flag checksWeek 4
06The arrangements that broke, and the complaints that followed→Evaluation suite, slices and regression casesWeek 4
07Named collections officers and a compliance reviewer→Officer gate and wording controls, then supervised casesWeeks 5–6
Nothing else is requiredDeployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.
Delivery timeline
Four phases across six weeks
Phases are drawn over the weeks they actually occupy. Week 5 runs on accounts already closed, so nobody in arrears is contacted to prove the agent.
PhaseW1W2W3W4W5W6
DiscoveryW1
BuildW2 – W3
EvaluateW4 – W5
Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6
Week focusW1The arrears stages in scope, the options you offer and who decidesW2Collections and servicing access, and the charge and contact historyW3Affordability capture, eligibility rules and vulnerability routingW4Contact limits, stop-flag checks and the evaluation suiteW5Cases replayed against accounts you closed last year, no contact madeW6Officers work live cases under review, then handover
Reading the bandVulnerability routing is finished in week 3 and tested in week 4, before any case in week 5 depends on it. That order is the plan, not a preference.
At the end of W6A case has been assembled, worked and closed under supervision at each arrears stage in scope, and every contact made in that window has been counted against your own limits, then Agent Care takes over monitoring.
DurationSix-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.
Next step · Banking AI agent
Build a collections agent around the forbearance you already offer.
Show us how an account reaches collections, the options your policy allows and who is allowed to call. We'll take a month of cases you have already closed and count what nobody named — the options the customer was eligible for, and the contacts that fell outside your own limits.
