DC Partner Help Their DC Clients Build Better Businesses
A Can Do Attitude
The recent DC Partner PDA event focused on how clients can use system features and partner integrations to grow their businesses.
Rather than get stuck on problems they encouraged a can do attitude and the use of their system features to overcome obstacles.
Herman Opens the Event
Mr. Herman Joubert opened up the event with a few words (including a nod to Cape Town traffic in the rain).
He pointed out that the day was a cooperative workshop (not a conference) designed to help in practical ways.
DC Partner and Finwise have many functions that Debt Counsellors don’t currently use but which could be used to grow their practices.
‘their aim is to give Debt Counsellors the tools to maximize proficiencies in their offices’
DC Partner aim to make sure they get direct in person feedback and then develop in line with needs of their clients.
“They want to ask: What is lacking and what is needed (on systems)? And Herman explained that their aim is to give Debt Counsellors the tools to maximize proficiencies in their offices.
After all Debt Counsellors are dealing with vulnerable people, dealing with peoples very private and important finances and so they need to be able to quickly build trust in the process if they want to help the client feel as comfortable as possible.
Interesting Facts:
SA has higher unemployment rate than Ukraine and Gaza (even during their wars)
PDAs Move R1.4 Billion/month
Over R123 Billion moved since PDAs started
Herman stressed the important role that associations, and the various forums, play and said the importance is increasing as things change so swiftly these days.
Perhaps referencing the increased push for NCR Task Team 2.0, Herman said that NOW is the time to do something and it is during this small window of opportunity the industry and role players can make a difference.
Did You Know?
Microsoft bought lots of Apple stock in 90s to help them stay afloat.
Herman pointed to the simple but often unrecognised truth that we all need to let go of the notion that for someone to “win”, someone has to “lose”.
What Lies Ahead
The key note speaker for the day was Mr Ryk Van Niekerk (known from MoneyWeb among other places).
Ryk has a wide ranging knowledge of the political and economic landscape of SA. Where it has been and where it may go.
Ryk asked: Where is SA going?
And then he tried to provide some of the possible paths that lie ahead and how that will impact on the economic outlook for SA.
Politically, many are currently a bit unsure. But things will soon play out to some sort of clarity.
“SA is never as bad as people think, but never as good as it could be…” – J Smuts
Ryk discussed various election positives like a lack of violence and a quick acceptance of the results.
‘Ryk discussed various election positives like a lack of violence and a quick acceptance of the results’
He then took some time to look at the stance of various parties (economically) and their future outlook.
Next, he discussed the effect of the elections on the Rand and JSE (minimal) and its link to international factors and international trends. He holds that external factors are still playing a bigger role than internal ones (including the elections).
He pointed out that SA bonds are now stable…at the worse they have ever been in SA history, showing poor market confidence in Government’s ability to repay debts.
There is and has been for some time a very stagnant economy with little or no growth. High interest rates (Repo) and rate hikes have been the highest (since 2008) in most peoples life time and are cutting off growth.
The dramatic increase in people’s debt repayments, as a result, has left people with no money to spend and shifted all available funds towards servicing debt. And sadly salary increases have been lower than inflation over the last 5 years.
Indebtedness is increasing and the margin for emergencies has shrunk. Thus there is a serious and growing need for debt review.
Joe Van Zyl discussed Finwise and the integration with the iDocs system. Use of iDocs is not obligatory, and Debt Counsellors can decide to use Finwise alone, iDocs alone or both integrated. It was this final option that his discussion focused on.
The two integrated systems have various features designed to save people time. Such as: automatically populating captured iDocs data into Finwise (including things like debit order cancellations, setting up DebiCheck for the new debt repayments via the pda). This takes seconds and reduces workload massively.
Did You Know?
Finwise currently integrates directly with Absa, FNB and Consumer Friend for CoBs, Proposals etc.
One message that came across was that the PDAs would like Debt Counsellors to encourage all credit providers to integrate via API with the PDAs.
Gerhard Dyzel (Mr Finwise) then spoke about…Finwise. That’s right.
He discussed various helpful features including DebiCheck, ID verification and Home Affairs check.
He discussed the nice dashboard to help manage client flow through the process and extensive reporting functionality. They feel the reporting function is underutalised and Debt Counsellors can get more insights by using this feature more.
Watch Gerhard’s Interview with the Debtfree Team Here:
Finwise are now offering API integration with DC CRM systems so they can pull or push information and populate fields with less work and less room for human error.
“There are endless possibilities” – Gerhard Dyzel
In development are various features such as a CoB reader (which will allow you to drag and drop a CoB into the system) and a document uploader. And should Debt Counsellors want to pre-load their own personalised SMS templates they can now do so.
One of the big focuses is clearly integrating with various credit providers (which eliminates the need for emails, has great turnaround times, PoPI friendly). Another focus is the consumer portal which may also be somewhat underutilised. They are even adding a feature where clients can upload documents into their files, which will be very useful as you can imagine.
GEt The Court Order First Time
Mel De Silva who has been in the industry from its formation then spent some time discussing Legasys.
The system is designed specifically for quickly making a suitable legal pack for particular courts (or for a correspondent who represents you at a particular court).
The system is integrated into Finwise so you can then prep the legal pack speedily and accurately using all the information that the client and credit providers have supplied.
With a few clicks the Debt Counsellor can submit the information or your attorney who has access to the system with your permission can initiate the document preparation.
The idea is that it is largely automatic with human oversight combining the best of both worlds for accuracy and flexibility. The system allows you to check each page of the drafted court documents (CoBs, IDs, Proposals etc). Once you are happy, you can then draw the founding and confirmatory affidavits and sign were needed. The matter can then be set down at the court.
One nice feature of the system is that it reminds customers about need to have affidavits commissioned. This is always an area which can derail the legal side of the process which is best sorted out swiftly.
Other nice features are how documents and templates can be personalized to your preferences. The system is not going to force you to use documents that are not to your liking.
Mel also touched on some new features of the iDocs system.
One such feature is how bank statements can be dragged and dropped into the system and it will OCR capture for you. This feature can be turned on by request (in Beta)
Customers can also upload a bank statement onto the system from their side which is helpful. Alternatively, the system can fetch the statement from the bank (via a special secure link and the consumers’ own internet banking).
Pernell Meyer kept things short and sweet with a discussion around the success of DebiCheck.
Watch how much Pernell loves DebiCheck in this video here
The success rate of payments organised this way is so high that doing things any other way just does not make sense.
After his discussion the guests were treated to some lunch and a good opportunity to network and discuss the programme.
If you missed the event or are based elsewhere in the country do not worry, DC Partner PDA have said they plan to hold similar events around the country in the near future.
So, simply get in touch and ask them when that may be and try get yourself a spot.