Case Study: HBOS achieves 12% liquidation lift and 97.6%/99.5% reconciliation with FICO PlacementsPlus

HBOS refines outsourced debt collection with FICO Decision Management

HBOS, formed in 2001 from the merger of Bank of Scotland and Halifax, is the UK’s fourth-largest bank and needed to improve and standardize how it managed external debt collection agencies. Manual, weekly reporting was labor-intensive, out of date, hard to audit and gave little activity‑based visibility, so HBOS sought a system to boost collection performance, reconciliation and agency oversight.

HBOS deployed FICO Network’s PlacementsPlus service (implemented in six months) to centralize placements, reporting, exception processing and reconciliation. The result was faster, real‑time agency communication, higher data integrity and reduced IT burden — reconciliation reached 97.6% by volume and 99.5% by value, liquidation rose 12% in the first four months, and account activity increased (outbound +18%, letters +25%, skip trace +29%, inbound +11%), delivering better portfolio control and operational efficiency.

HBOS