Case Study: Leading Retail Bank reduces collections costs by 35% with Mu Sigma

Improved collections process for a leading retail bank

Mu Sigma worked with Leading Retail Bank, a leading regional US bank, to improve its early-stage collections process during an economic downturn. The bank faced rising delinquency volumes and needed to better balance collection effectiveness with staffing and channel costs across agents, IVR, and mailers.

Mu Sigma built a collection optimization framework to measure customer responsiveness, estimate the incremental impact of different collection actions, and recommend the best next step for each customer under resource constraints. The solution helped Leading Retail Bank reduce early-stage collection costs by more than 35%, reallocate agents to more impactful areas, and generate annual savings of over $1MM while maintaining a 98% collection rate.