Secure Trust Bank Signs Up With Callcredit for Acquisition and Verification Support

LEEDS, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwire) -- 02/07/12 -- Secure Trust Bank has selected Callcredit Information Group to provide tailored customer acquisition and verification services to support its growth.

The bank, which specialises in offering lending and banking solutions to UK customers who may not be adequately served by other banks, has enlisted the services of Callcredits Bristol-based contact centre to manage an outbound telesales campaign targeting prospective customers. The FSA-accredited contact centre will be tasked with achieving sales in a restricted timescale.

In addition, Secure Trust has signed up to use Callcredits bespoke identification and verification software, CallValidate, to check the identity of new customers and fulfil strict anti-money laundering (AML) requirements. Callcredits intelligent system will process the banks customer applications in real-time, and give a confident pass / fail decision, using data drawn from UK records, including court judgements, insolvency data and the electoral register.

Developing a risk based approach to AML in line with Joint Money Laundering Steering Group (JMLSG) guidelines is a legislative requirement for the banking sector, and the software enables the simultaneous review of a range of databases, ensuring that high verification rates are maintained while reducing the costs and time involved in validating the identity of prospective customers.

Paul Lynam, CEO of Secure Trust Bank, said: "We are excited to be working with Callcredit to support our customer acquisition and verification processes.

"Although we have an experienced in-house team to manage inbound calls, we needed a partner who could deliver a successful outbound campaign while maintaining excellent service for our customers and adhering to FSA regulations, and were delighted that Callcredit offers the services and quality that we were looking for.

"With the verification software, there is nothing that should be more important to any bank than safeguarding customers by consistently applying the highest possible standards of vigilance and professional disciplines to its operations. Callcredit are playing an important role in helping us to ensure that we meet our regulatory obligations whilst retaining our reputation as a simple, straightforward bank for customers to deal with."

Duncan Graham, Commercial Director at Callcredit, said: "Our contact centre staff are highly trained and experienced, so can offer exceptional customer service around a wide range of topics. We are confident that we can help Secure Trust Bank reach more customers with their unique service."

John Cannon, Head of Product Strategy, Financial Crime, at Callcredit, added: "Meeting AML regulatory requirements presents a number of challenges to UK banks in ensuring that their customers identity can be adequately verified. We are delighted that Secure Trust Bank has chosen to work with Callcredit in using CallValidate to develop a risk based approach in line with JMLSG guidelines."

About Callcredit Information Group - www.callcredit.co.uk

Callcredit Information Groups leading approach to deploying consumer information brings together experts across the fields of credit referencing, marketing services, interactive solutions and consultative analytics to provide clients with a range of innovative and effective products to discover new customers and to engage with current customers to optimise and increase profitability.

Products include award-winning fraud verification tools and database solutions to positively verify consumers, global operations to help expand businesses into new markets, digital solutions to improve the overall journey consumers make during interaction with a brand, customer handling to ensure consumer satisfaction at all levels and consumer marketing data and segmentation to improve understanding and targeting of customers and prospects.

Callcredit also offers products for their clients to assess a customers credit risk and affordability and their experts in collections and recoveries provide tailored debt recovery and tracing tools. Their market analysis and network planning function helps organisations develop profitable retail networks, and their tools in multi bureau, analytics and metrics work to provide fully assessed bureau data.