Take control
of your
debt book
BFY helped us to rapidly reduce the size of customer debt and enabled us to keep it permanently lower
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Our People
For more information on managing debt in Energy and Utilities, contact one of our experts below.
For more information, please contact:
For more information, please contact:
Debt Maturity Assessment
Data-driven insight to optimise collections
Build a high-performing, risk-focussed debt operation with BFY’s Debt Maturity Assessment. By applying data-led insight across your end-to-end collections journey, we identify tactical improvements that develop your strengths and help you to exceed industry benchmarks.
Across three stages, this assessment scores internal debt maturity against 10 key capabilities, aligning recommendations with your company objectives and customer experience requirements to deliver bottom-line results.
Whether supplying Energy or Water, every Utility company holds unique operational characteristics, which is why we work in conjunction with internal debt teams to understand the reality of their collections journey. We’re focussed on leveraging our expertise in the most impactful areas, giving leaders the knowledge to drive lasting change.
How it works – Debt Maturity Assessment
Our Debt Maturity Assessment is derived from a market-leading Maturity Model, allowing us to assess internal capability at key points in the collections journey. This includes managing the risk of customers falling into debt, and dealing with challenging segments, such as customers that are unable, or refusing to pay outstanding bills.
The assessment consists of three stages:
Why is debt collection performance important?
In its nature, customer debt is difficult and risky to manage. The Affordability Crisis has exacerbated this challenge for Utility suppliers, with households struggling more than ever to pay their energy and water bills.
Unsurprisingly, an effective collections process is crucial in this climate. By implementing our guidance on collections performance, Utility suppliers can improve their cashflow and reduce bad debt, while remaining focussed on supporting vulnerable customers.
Our Debt Maturity Assessment optimises your internal operation, potentially saving you time and money on dealing with external DCAs, who may not be aligned to your company culture and objectives.
Who do we work with?
With extensive experience of managing customer debt, we support suppliers across the B2C and B2B Utilities market, whether a large retailer or challenger brand.
Energy and Water companies will benefit from our Debt Maturity Assessment by:
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Understanding their internal strengths and weaknesses
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Improving their performance across the collections journey
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Practicing long-term continuous improvement
Why do our clients choose us?
At BFY, we combine market-leading insight with hands-on delivery expertise, providing a client experience that produces exceptional results.
We focus on understanding your company objectives and aligning them with our approach, as shown by the three stages of our Debt Maturity Assessment.
Doing this allows us to deliver improvements in the most impactful areas, while giving your people the knowledge and processes to continue this, through a permanent shift in culture.
Case studies
Our debt specialists deploy the Maturity Model in your organisation, assessing over 190 activities across the collections journey to produce a capability score in 10 areas. These scores are established by comparing your performance with industry benchmarks, supported by our in-depth knowledge and experience of utilities debt collection.
Next, we support your debt team with deploying the model internally and conducting a self-assessment of the collections journey. This is an invaluable stage of the process, as it allows our debt specialists to gain a complete view of the internal operation, drawing on the first-hand experiences of the people within it.
We work in conjunction with your debt team throughout this stage, ensuring there is a full understanding of the capability areas and their associated scoring criteria.
After gathering insight from both reviews, we conclude the assessment by presenting a series of actionable improvements for your internal debt operation. Based on our understanding of your collections journey, we help you to prioritise these actions and focus on those with the greatest material impact, supported by a forecast of financial and operational benefits.
This includes immediate tactical guidance for ‘quick wins’, alongside strategic insight on the key levers to pull for long-term change. During previous assessments, we’ve forecasted the impact of these actions on Bad Debt Charge (BDC), helping our clients to exceed the industry benchmark and deliver multi-million-pound benefit opportunities.
When the Debt Maturity Assessment is complete, we focus on setting up your internal debt team for continuous improvement, led by our Ways of Working Framework. This approach leaves you well equipped to remain ‘best in class’, long after you’ve finished working with us, outlining the transformation activities required to reach your optimal target state.