Customer Arrears Agent
Location: Remote (UK residents only)
Start Date: 7th October 2024
Working Hours: Monday - Friday 09:00 - 17:30
Salary: Up to £24,500 + 25 days holiday and a fantastic range of benefits which can be foundHERE
About Us
When we started Kensington we were the first specialist lender to offer mortgages to people the high street turned down. Over 25 years later, we're the UK's leading specialist mortgage lender still blazing a trail offering people the chance to get a mortgage. Where high street lenders see black and white, we've always used our expertise and manual underwriting capability to see the shades in between. In a market where changing lifestyles mean more people are falling outside the traditional mortgage criteria, it's an approach that can make a real difference to people who want to own a property.
It's what we call the Kensington Difference.
Kensington Mortgage Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barclays Bank UK PLC and the principal activity of the Company is the origination and servicing of mortgage assets. The Company is authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority for regulated activities.
What You Will Be Doing
The role is to effectively communicate with early arrears customers and third parties over the telephone regarding mortgage payment difficulties and arrears. Establishing the customers reason for arrears, current financial and personal circumstances including any vulnerability, whilst identifying appropriate resolutions based on individual circumstances and adhering with internal and external policy, procedure and FCA regulations.
Our Customer Arrears Support Team are the first point of contact for customers predominantly 0-3 months in arrears. Agents will speak to customers about their arrears balances with an aim to rehabilitate them whether that's agreeing an arrangement, sending out a regulated 3rd party or sign posting them to an external organisation for further help and support.
Agents will also work correspondence received from customers and contact the customer, so we can resolve their query and log any complaints a customer raises with them achieving resolution at first point of contact.
Key Accountabilities
- To fully understand customer circumstances/financial difficulty including vulnerability to identify appropriate resolutions such as arrangements to pay or forbearance.
- Support high volume calls and/or transactions across the wider area.
- Resolve challenging customer communications and queries regarding payment difficulties and arrears to effective resolution.
- Able to navigate customers through the mortgage pre-litigation process.
- Plan and prioritise allocated workloads against agreed service standards within the early arrears area.
- Ensure all work completed is done so in accordance with applicable policy, procedure and regulation whilst utilising judgement to resolve issues.
- Resolve queries or referrals from both within and outside of the team.
- Take ownership for investigating and responding to internal and external requests accurately and efficiently.
What You Will Need
- Telephone/call centre arrears/collection experience, preferably within the financial services/mortgage industry.
- Good understanding of vulnerable customers and identifying vulnerability
- Good understanding of Support options/sign posting.
- Possess strong negotiation and reasoning skills for effective resolutions such as income and expenditure completion, agreeing arrangements to pay etc.
- Able to effectively probe and question as well as show empathy to customers.
- Able to effectively communicate and respond to customers in challenging situations both verbally and in writing.
- Able to effectively meet individual and team targets in a pressurised environment.
- Possess strong objection handling skills and problem resolving skills to quickly resolve customer complaints.
- Good understanding of Microsoft office applications.
- Good understanding of forbearance options.
- An understanding and the ability to interpret numerous/complex collections processes and policies.
- Good understanding of FCA regulations including money laundering, data protection, consumer duty and vulnerable customers.
*Please note that we can only consider your application if you are available to start on the 7th October and to ensure you get the most out of our training, we ask that you avoid taking annual leave during the first 7 weeks.
Why Join Kensington Mortgages
Our employees are critical to our success. We work hard to ensure that Kensington Mortgages is a great place to work. We recognise the difference it makes to our business when people challenge themselves and take advantage of the development opportunities available so we try and support everyone however we can.
We also recognise the fact that people seek work life balance and continuously develop our benefits offering to create an inclusive and supportive culture where differences that exist between us all are recognised, understood and valued.
As a reputable employer regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, all offers of employment for this role are subject to a series of background checks, including criminal (DBS) and financial checks.
If you care deeply about making customers happy and want to make a `Difference' - we'd love to hear from you!