Delivering Market-Leading Debt Recovery with the Smallest Panel Allocation

Overview

A leading UK energy supplier manages early-stage debt recovery through a competitive four-agency Champion Challenge framework, where every agency's performance is benchmarked daily against transparent league tables. Success is measured by a single objective: recovering at least 70% of the debt value allocated across both live and final accounts.

Pastdue Credit Solutions (PDCS), a Firstsource company, competed within this framework while receiving just 10% of the total panel allocation, the smallest share on the panel. Despite competing against larger, lower-cost providers managing significantly greater volumes, PDCS consistently exceeded the energy supplier's recovery target, achieved the highest debt recovery performance on the panel, and maintained a top-two ranking throughout the engagement.

This performance was sustained across two contract periods spanning more than six years, demonstrating consistent delivery even as competitive and commercial pressures evolved.

Challenges

The engagement presented several commercial and operational challenges that made sustained success increasingly difficult.

• Increasing performance expectations: During PDCS's time on the panel, the energy supplier's recovery target increased from 50% to 70%, raising the performance standard for every agency.
• Operating with the smallest allocation: PDCS received only 10% of total panel volume, while competing agencies managed allocations ranging from 10% to 55%. With fewer customer opportunities and higher UK operating costs than offshore competitors, every contact carried greater importance.
• Transparent daily benchmarking: Performance rankings were shared across the energy supplier and all participating agencies every day. Underperformance was immediately visible, creating constant competitive pressure.
• Re-establishing delivery: Following a previous contract ending for commercial reasons, PDCS returned to the panel by rebuilding the operation, leadership team and advisor capability while maintaining confidence with the energy supplier.
• Variable account portfolios: The mix of live and final accounts changed regularly, together with customer contact rates and debt profiles. Despite this variability, the recovery target remained constant.

How We Made it Happen

Rather than focusing on activity measures such as call volumes, PDCS designed its operating model around delivering consistently better customer outcomes and higher debt recovery performance.

• Performance management: Redesigned to support the energy supplier's increased recovery expectations, with daily visibility of panel rankings enabling operational leaders to respond quickly to emerging trends.
• Structured coaching: Shifted greater ownership to advisors through self-led SMART objectives, supported by continuous side-by-side coaching, live call observations and targeted development. This created greater accountability while improving confidence, objection handling and customer conversations.
• Value-based segmentation: Collections activity was also segmented by customer value. Higher-balance accounts were allocated to experienced advisors, ensuring customers with the greatest financial impact received the highest level of expertise.
• Outcome-focused delivery: Balanced cash collections, sustainable payment arrangements, direct debit conversions and prepayment meter transitions across both live and final account portfolios, keeping the focus on outcomes rather than activity throughout the engagement.

"PDCS consistently ranked amongst our top-performing agencies throughout the Champion Challenge framework." - UK Energy Supplier

Conclusion

This engagement demonstrates that outstanding collections performance is not determined by scale or allocation alone. Through disciplined performance management, targeted coaching and an outcome-focused operating model, PDCS consistently outperformed larger competitors while exceeding increasingly demanding expectations.

The result was sustained, independently benchmarked performance and a trusted long-term partnership built on measurable outcomes.