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UtilitY WEEK | 20th March - 2nd april 2015 | 27 Customers Six key points: Vulnerability and compliance are the two watchwords in consumer debt man- agement today. Remember that customers in debt are still customers – don't write them off, help them. Helping custom- ers pay back their debt or avoid getting into debt, reduces cost to serve and bad debt charges. Customers with debt are likely to have wider financial troubles – collabo- rating with trusted third parties can help reveal the bigger picture. Learning to exploit big data is essential to effective consumer debt man- agement. Compliance with debt-handling regulation does not necessarily equate to best practice. The Speakers Mark Fawcitt, credit risk manager, Scottish power "I don't view Ofgem as an organisation that knows much about debt collection. They are not going to turn around to me and say we expect this … They are going to look for best prac- tice … the first things they are going to look at are the FCA source book and the CSA code of practice." Mark Wilkinson, customer collections manager, northumbrian Water "We don't add cost to anybody who we don't think can afford to pay. If you do that, you're just going to make the situation a whole lot worse and it's going to take you a long time to recover it." Martyn Cladingbowl, head of utilities, callcredit information Group "We've been able to derive big levels of algorithms and data sets that allow [the banks] to treat customers more effectively; looking at current account turnover, looking at applications of incomes, looking at debtor profile. All of this allow them to understand customer affordability, not just their propensity to pay." Max Griffiths, head of credit risk, centrica "We need to focus our efforts on cus- tomers who most need our help. To do that we use a combination of data – data from external credit agencies and in-house data where we already know something about that customer, to identify which ones are most likely to fall into arrears." Stuart Ledger, chief financial officer, Thames Water "We've started using our debt collection agents in a slightly different way. We've trained them in the range of products we have available to help customers, so that when they identify someone as vulner- able, they can upsell our services."