Supporting our customers
Understanding our customers is fundamental to our success. Our relationships with our customers are built around respect and collaboration with the goal of providing affordable financial solutions tailored to their needs as a pathway towards mainstream financial inclusion.
We want to make it easier for our customers to do business with us, and create opportunities that will ultimately allow them to participate in parts of the economy they may have been excluded from.
Customer engagement
A good relationship with our customers is critical to agreeing appropriate financial solutions. We are collaborative and take a respectful and understanding approach to each customer’s situation. We work with our customers to ensure a sustainable and realistic repayment solution.
Credit Corp maintains a number of proactive controls to identify and respond to hardship, sensitive issues or dissatisfaction in order to provide the best service to our customers. In addition to this, we have measures to identify and assist customers facing vulnerability. We reinforce contact points within our business with Financial Counselling Australia for escalation of any particular cases their members may wish to discuss.
Lowest industry complaint rates
We maintain the lowest number of external dispute resolution (EDR) complaints per million dollars collected in our industry, as sourced from published results by our EDR provider. Our complaint rate is 25 per cent lower than our nearest competitor.
In the US, we maintain a dispute rate per million dollars collected which is significantly lower than our publicly-traded competitors as reported by the federal regulator.
Customer advocacy
We work closely with financial counsellors and consumer advocates to develop responsible financial solutions for our customers, and offer a dedicated escalation point for financial counsellors through our Customer Experience function.
We recognise the important role financial counsellors play in assisting vulnerable consumers and we sponsor a number of financial counsellor conferences every year. We train all of our frontline operations staff to identify and respond to financial hardship, whether raised by a customer or financial counsellor, and empower them to apply appropriate forbearance to address hardship at the first point of contact.
In December 2023, Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) released its bi-annual Rank the Banks survey. For the second time in a row, Credit Corp scored higher than all the financial organisations surveyed across Australia when it comes to responding to financial hardship.
Jan Pentland scholarship
For the last eight years, Credit Corp has granted an annual scholarship through the Jan Pentland Foundation, aimed at providing an opportunity for a recipient in the not for profit sector to gain their Diploma in Financial Counselling.
The Foundation honours Jan Pentland, who championed the cause for financial counselling and campaigned for a better deal for people on low incomes or who were vulnerable.
The 2023 scholarship winner was announced at the FCA National Conference in May.
This 2023 recipient, Maggie, has been working in Northern Territory communities for the last six years. She is now employed by Lutheran Care, supporting First Nations communities surrounding Alice Springs and working closely with financial counsellors on a daily basis. Once qualified, she would like to make a difference in the domestic and family violence field of financial counselling and ultimately return to herhometown in Victoria to assist those in rural and remote areas without access to financial counselling.
Responsible lending
We provide responsible and affordable loans to consumers, many of whom may find that their only alternatives are significantly more expensive.
Technological efficiency and a low cost structure allows us to offer customers some of the lowest cost loan products in the credit-impaired segment, whilst at the same time conforming to interest and fee parameters recommended by consumer advocacy groups during regulatory consultation.
We apply responsible lending practices. As the holder of an Australian Credit License, Credit Corp complies with relevant laws and regulations, including but not limited to responsible lending obligations and design and distribution obligations.