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Banking AI agent · Collections

Collections & Hardship-Support AI Agent

Assemble what is known about an account in arrears, work out which forbearance options fit the circumstances and hand a collections officer a case — the arrangement and the contact stay with a person.

Typical delivery
4–6 weeks
Deployment
Your stack
Arrangements
Named officer
After launch
Agent Care

What this agent does

Prepares the case, never the conversation

In

  1. 01

    Assemble the account as it stands — the arrears stage, the charges applied, the promises kept and broken.

  2. 02

    Take in what the customer has already supplied about their situation, in the words and figures they used.

Reason

  1. 03

    Build the affordability picture from those figures alone, on the income-and-expenditure standard your team uses.

  2. 04

    Set the circumstances against the forbearance your policy offers, and name which options fit and which do not.

  3. 05

    Check the account for a stop already in force — insolvency, bereavement, a debt adviser at work, a refused channel.

Decide

  1. 06

    Route ill health, bereavement, domestic or economic abuse and mental-health disclosure to a named specialist.

  2. 07

    Flag where the contact rules leave no room — the frequency spent, the hour, the channel or a stop in force.

Out

  1. 08

    Hand the collections officer a case — the position, the affordability picture, the options that fit, what is missing.

  2. 09

    Retain what was read, what was proposed, what the officer changed, and every contact attempted with its result.

Product statement

The agent assembles, works out and hands over. Agreeing or varying an arrangement, deciding what a customer can afford, contacting a customer in arrears and any default or termination notice stay with named bank staff.

Example workflow

One account in arrears, end to end

  1. 1Account enters arrearsA missed payment, a broken arrangement, or a customer telling you they are in difficulty
  2. 2Position assembledArrears stage, charges applied, prior arrangements, promises kept and broken, and every contact already made
  3. 3Circumstances readWhat the customer supplied — income, essential costs, dependants — and anything they disclosed about their situation
  4. 4Options and limits worked outWhich forbearance fits on your own policy, what contact the rules still allow, and any stop already in force

No human action required

Stages 1 to 4 run before an officer opens the case — the position, the circumstances, the options and the limits are worked out first. Nothing in that stretch calls a customer, writes to one or sets an arrangement.

5DecisionSplits on what was disclosed and how complete the picture is
Picture complete, nothing disclosed

Reaches the collections officer ready to work.

Disclosure made, or picture thin

Goes to the specialist team ahead of the queue.

Collections officer

Reads the arrears position, the affordability picture, the options that fit and what is missing, then decides what may be offered and makes the contact.

Open · Correct · Refer to specialist

Officer decided — handed back

  1. 6Officer decides, agent recordsOnly what a named person authorised — the arrangement, the wording and the contact — written where access and policy allow
  2. 7Outcome evaluatedOptions named against options offered, disclosures routed on time, contact inside the limits, and cases rebuilt

Referrals

A disclosure the officer catches and the agent did not counts as a failure.

What should not run autonomously

Human approval stays in control

Outside the boundary — human approval required

8 items

  • Agreeing, varying or ending an arrangement.
    • Deferring, reducing or writing off what is owed.
    • Contacting a customer in arrears.
    • Deciding what a customer can afford to pay.

  • Automation boundary

    Agent acts unaided

    • ✓Assemble the arrears position, the charges applied and the contact already made.
    • ✓Build the affordability picture from what was supplied.
    • ✓Name which forbearance options the circumstances actually fit, and what is missing.
    • ✓Route a disclosure straight to the specialist team.

    Write actions run only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation. Contacting a customer is not one.

    • Issuing a default, termination or enforcement notice.
    • Handling a disclosure of abuse, illness or bereavement.
    • Reporting an arrangement to a credit reference agency.
  • Changing contact limits, hardship rules or routing triggers.

Example output

One account in arrears, annotated

Everything the agent proposes is attached to the account and the circumstances it came from.

Collections case · single account

Illustrative example
Position
Three payments behind
Customer says
Hours cut, one earner
Last contact
Day 9, letter
Options that fit
Reduced payment, or a pause
Confidence
88%
Arrangement
Not set by the agent

As received

The position from your systems and the customer's own account of it — nothing on this side is inferred.

Evidence used

  • Income and costs supplied
  • Two arrangements broken
  • Charges applied to date

Why these two and not others

Both fit the policy and the figures the customer gave. A term change does not.

What the score decides

How much the officer must establish first — never what the customer can afford.

Action

OpenCorrectRefer to specialist

Value

Where AI adds value

The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.

Where the value lands

Value 01 – 04

Every account in arrears

Missed payments, broken plans and hardship contacts

03Options & limits

Match circumstances to options

Set what the customer has told you against the forbearance your policy actually offers, the contact rules that bind, and any stop already in force.

01Approved path

Have the case ready before the call

The arrears position, the affordability picture and the options that fit arrive together, so the officer is not assembling them while the customer waits.

02Human review

Route a disclosure out of collections

Ill health, bereavement, abuse and mental-health disclosure are routed to a named specialist, and what may travel with the disclosure is set in advance.

04

Build an evidence trail

Retain the position assembled, the figures the customer gave, the options named, the officer's decision and every contact attempted — on both paths.

Integrations

Typical integrations

Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.

  • Collections & servicing

    • FIS
    • Fiserv
    • Jack Henry
    • Temenos
    • collections platforms

  • Hardship & arrangements

    • Arrangement records
    • hardship forms
    • Debt-adviser referrals
    • breathing space

  • Customer contact

    • Dialler and contact history
    • letters
    • SMS and email
    • Consent records

Agent

Collections & hardship support

  • Assembles the position
  • Names the options
  • Routes disclosures

  • Credit reporting & status

    • Credit reference feeds
    • complaint logs
    • Insolvency registers
    • deceased flags

  • Observability & evaluation

    • OpenTelemetry
    • Langfuse
    • Supported monitoring/evaluation sources

Integration availability depends on the client's existing systems and API access.

Agent controls

Six layers between a case and a customer

Each control wraps the one inside it. A case clears every layer before it reaches an officer, and contacting the customer sits outside all six.

L6 · Outermost — last line of defence

Inward → L1 · closest to the model

L6Rollback / safe modeReturn cases to unaided officers if evaluations or production signals degrade.Roll back
L5TraceabilityRecord the position read, the options named, the decision and the contact.Record
L4Officer gateNo arrangement, notice or contact without a named collections officer.Gate
L3Contact limitsFrequency, hours, channel and any stop in force are checked first.Restrict
L2Option eligibilityOptions are checked against your hardship policy and the account's terms.Check
L1Disclosure routingWording on your vulnerability list is sent to the specialist team.Route
Model coreCase proposed — the arrears position, the affordability picture, the options that fit and the confidence
L1 – L2
Decide whether this is a collections case
L3
Decides whether contact is open at all
L4 – L5
Keep the terms with a person, on the record
L6
Pulls automation back when signals degrade

How Nestack evaluates it

Evaluate the whole case — not only whether an arrangement held.

Coverage runs the whole depth of the workflow, and every layer is cut by slice.

Surface — the case the collections officer opens

  1. E1Position evaluationWas the arrears position assembled correctly from the systems of record?
  2. E2Affordability evaluationWas the picture built only from figures the customer actually supplied?
  3. E3Eligibility evaluationDid the options named fit the policy and the circumstances given?
  4. E4Disclosure recallWas every disclosure routed to a named person, and how quickly?
  5. E5Slice evaluationHow does performance change across specific arrears cohorts?
  6. E6Business outcomeOptions named against options offered, and cases the officer rebuilt.

Floor — options that fitted, offered inside the contact rules

Failure modes

Where each failure originates in the agent

Seven failure modes plotted against the five stages of the agent lifecycle.

Agent lifecycle

Direction of processing →

  1. 01 · Case assembly

    2 modes

    • CH-01

      Wrong party on the assembled case

      A traced number belongs to someone else and reaches the officer as the customer's.

    • CH-02

      Stop in force not seen

      Insolvency, a refused channel or a death notice is missed.

    Stage gathers

    The arrears, the charges and the contact already made

  2. 02 · Circumstances

    2 modes

    • CH-03

      Disclosure said in passing

      Ill health mentioned mid-form is filed as a note, not routed.

    • CH-04

      Variable income read as regular

      Two good months set the figure and the picture overstates capacity.

    Stage reads

    What the customer supplied, and what they disclosed

  3. 03 · Option matching

    1 mode

    • CH-05

      One option, the cheapest to run

      The forbearance easiest to administer is the only one named.

    Stage matches

    The options that fit, and the limits on contact

  4. 04 · Handover / write

    1 mode

    • CH-06

      Case handed over half-assembled

      Prior contact and charges are missing, so the officer rebuilds it.

    Stage presents

    The case an officer works, with nothing agreed

  5. 05 · Change / Version

    1 mode

    • CH-07

      Change narrows what is offered

      An option quietly leaves one cohort's list and nobody measures it.

    Stage tracks

    Model, prompt, policy and contact-rule changes

  • Sev-1 · the officer is pointed at the wrong person
  • Sev-2 · the wrong option is put forward
  • Sev-3 · the officer gets a thin case
See the complete Banking failure-mode catalogue

Affected slices

A tidy arrears file is the easy case

A single missed payment on a salaried account is largely a records question. The failures land on households whose income moves every month, and on debt one party never chose. Nestack reports by slice, not only in total.

Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregate

Illustrative example
SliceFailure rateLiftLift vs. thresholdStatus
Coerced and joint-debt cases5.6%3.7×Review
Variable and seasonal income3.8%2.5×Review
Newly acquired portfolios2.7%1.8×Watch
First missed payment, salaried1.2%0.8×Normal

Bar: mis-prepared-case lift vs. first-arrears baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold

2 of 4 slices over threshold

Evidence-linked improvement

A broken arrangement is evidence, not a verdict

An arrangement that fails may have been the wrong one, or the only one anybody named. Only the record of what was offered tells you which.

Improvement cycle · five stages

Switchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn

  1. 01

    Detect

    Broken arrangements, complaints or contact outside the limits move in one cohort.

  2. 02

    Diagnose

    Isolated to the position gathered, the income figures used, the eligibility rules or the disclosure routing.

  3. 03

    Improve

    The change is signed off by the collections lead and the vulnerability team, then version-linked.

  4. 04

    Verify

    Tested against cases already closed, and against the disclosures the agent walked past.

  5. 05

    Learn

    The wording nobody acted on is written into the vulnerability list, and the case is kept beside it.

  6. Learn → Detect

    The return edge. Whether an option was the right one is known months later, so each cycle re-reads cases the last one had already closed.

Typical build scope

Twelve workstreams across six weeks

The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, the arrears position, affordability and options, evaluation, the officer queue, then production validation and handover.

Workstream

Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6

  1. 01Arrears discovery and boundary definition.Week 1
  2. 02Collections and servicing system assessment.Week 1, Week 2
  3. 03Hardship policy and forbearance option map.Week 1, Week 2
  4. 04Arrears position and charge-history assembly.Week 2
  5. 05Affordability capture on your own standard.Week 2, Week 3
  6. 06Option eligibility rules and exclusions.Week 3
  7. 07Vulnerability routing and specialist team handover.Week 3, Week 4
  8. 08Contact-limit rules and stop-flag checks.Week 4
  9. 09Officer gate, wording and approval controls.Week 4
  10. 10Slice evaluation suite and arrears regression cases.Week 4, Week 5
  11. 11Collections-queue and case-note integration.Week 5, Week 6
  12. 12Observability, deployment and Agent Care handover.Week 6

12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallel

Final scope and sequence confirmed in discovery

Engagement tiers

What each tier includes

Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.

Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tierPilotOne product, one arrears stageProductionProduction collections integrationAdvancedMulti-entity / acquired books
Introduced at Pilot
Arrears position and affordability picture✓✓✓
Options named against your own policy✓✓✓
Disclosure routed to a named specialist✓✓✓
Contact limits, stops and an officer gate✓✓✓
Audit trail of options and contact✓✓✓
Baseline evaluation✓✓✓
Introduced at Production
Additional products and arrears stages—✓✓
Collections-queue and letter integration—✓✓
Observability and evaluation—✓✓
Introduced at Advanced
Multi-entity and acquired portfolios——✓
High volume and additional languages——✓
Build priceFrom $5,000From $8,000Custom quote
Final build price
Confirmed after discovery based on the products and arrears stages in scope, collections and servicing integrations, contact channels, case volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
Separate from build
Build pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.

What we need from you

What you bring, and what we build with it

Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.

  1. 01How an account reaches collections, and the options you offer

    Arrears discovery and forbearance option map

    Week 1

  2. 02Access to the collections, servicing and contact systems

    Collections and servicing system assessment, then integration

    Week 2

  3. 03The income-and-expenditure standard your team works to

    Affordability capture on your own standard

    Week 2

  4. 04Your vulnerability list, and who a disclosure must reach

    Vulnerability routing and specialist handover

    Week 3

  5. 05Your contact rules, and the stops that override them

    Contact-limit rules and stop-flag checks

    Week 4

  6. 06The arrangements that broke, and the complaints that followed

    Evaluation suite, slices and regression cases

    Week 4

  7. 07Named collections officers and a compliance reviewer

    Officer gate and wording controls, then supervised cases

    Weeks 5–6

Nothing else is required

Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.

Delivery timeline

Four phases across six weeks

Phases are drawn over the weeks they actually occupy. Week 5 runs on accounts already closed, so nobody in arrears is contacted to prove the agent.

Phase

W1

W2

W3

W4

W5

W6

  1. DiscoveryW1
  2. BuildW2 – W3
  3. EvaluateW4 – W5
  4. Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6

Week focus

W1The arrears stages in scope, the options you offer and who decides

W2Collections and servicing access, and the charge and contact history

W3Affordability capture, eligibility rules and vulnerability routing

W4Contact limits, stop-flag checks and the evaluation suite

W5Cases replayed against accounts you closed last year, no contact made

W6Officers work live cases under review, then handover

Reading the band
Vulnerability routing is finished in week 3 and tested in week 4, before any case in week 5 depends on it. That order is the plan, not a preference.
At the end of W6
A case has been assembled, worked and closed under supervision at each arrears stage in scope, and every contact made in that window has been counted against your own limits, then Agent Care takes over monitoring.
Duration
Six-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.

Next step · Banking AI agent

Build a collections agent around the forbearance you already offer.

Show us how an account reaches collections, the options your policy allows and who is allowed to call. We'll take a month of cases you have already closed and count what nobody named — the options the customer was eligible for, and the contacts that fell outside your own limits.

Typical delivery
4–6 weeks
Deployment
Your collections stack
Arrangements
A named collections officer
After launch
Agent Care available

Nestack Agents · Collections & hardship support

AGT-BK-05 · Agent Care available after launch

Build a collections agent

Four questions so the call starts from your actual setup — then pick a time that suits you.

About you
Your setup

No obligation. We’ll map the workflow, name the automation boundary and tell you if an agent is the wrong answer.