Cost Of Living Christmas: Reason For Christmas Cheer
by Rory Traynor
Recent deregulation in the energy market has provided an extraordinary opportunity for energy brokers to expand their businesses. But with new opportunity comes many challenges – one key challenge is accessing the best data.
Red Flag Alert’s real‐time business data provides the information energy brokers need to build robust credit control processes and develop a healthy pipeline of new business.
Here are eight benefits of using Red Flag Alert.
Faster and More Accurate Credit Decisions
Red Flag Alert collates data on every business in the UK and uses it to assign each business with a specific financial health rating. The data is collated from ten leading data sources, and there are 100,000 data changes every day, with 50,000 new businesses added monthly. Sophisticated algorithms and credit analysts evaluate this data to provide the health rating.
The financial health scores can confidently be used to drive credit decisions. Every broker will have a slightly different risk appetite, so the specific Red Flag Alert ratings are perfect; a broker can assess the financial health of a business and then make a quick credit decision.
Many brokers trust Red Flag Alert as a tool to make automatic decisions, greatly speeding up the process and allowing responsible brokers to build a book of clients on appropriate credit terms.
Improve Customer Onboarding
With deregulation has come greater competition. To remain competitive there is pressure on brokers to provide excellent customer service. One of the key customer complaints is a long and burdensome due diligence process.
Subsequently, brokers are left needing to strike a balance between responsible lending and providing a quick and easy process for customers.
Red Flag Alert is the perfect tool because once the broker has decided on what level of risk they will accept, they can make a quick decision as the financial assessment has already been calculated by Red Flag Alert.
Managing the Lag Between Due Diligence and Underwriting
Clients can be onboarded even though their energy deal doesn’t start for a specific period of time (sometimes years) because their current deal needs to expire. This presents a problem for brokers because they’ve been through due diligence at the beginning of the process, but by the time the deal starts circumstances may have changed.
Red Flag Alert has brokers covered in these circumstances because the financial health rating of every business is updated in real‐time. When new information becomes available, the rating is adjusted. Whether it’s a published set of accounts, change of ownership, interim results or a CCJ, Red Flag Alert is plugged into the data that matters most.
Key changes are pushed to your team so when it’s time for underwriting, if a client’s financial health has deteriorated the broker will know.
Monitoring Clients
Clients experiencing financial distress can cause considerable problems with payments. The best brokers can source clients and manage those relationships effectively, and a large part of this process is monitoring financial health.
Red Flag Alert helps drive brokers and businesses to do this by pushing the latest business information right to the key decision‐maker in the business.
This allows brokers to engage with customers that are having issues and work on solutions – far more preferable than having payments slow down or stop.
Manage a Change in New Premises
When premises change hands, chasing up arrears is often a costly and time‐consuming process. If brokers can build a detailed overview of the incoming tenant, this will help to determine if the arrears need to be paid by the new business.
Red Flag Alert contains 20 million decision‐maker details, so it’s simple to make connections between businesses, allowing brokers to understand whether a new tenant is connected to the previous one and, therefore, liable for energy bills.
Build Sales Lists
Red Flag Alert is used by brokers to grow their business, and in the new deregulated market business development opportunities for brokers are considerable. This is a great opportunity but also a challenge – it’s easy to spend valuable resources chasing the wrong clients.
Red Flag Alert has extensive data on every business in the UK; this information is perfect for building targeted marketing lists. The data can be segmented by dozens of key variables like size, turnover, location and sector, enabling marketers to target very specific groups.
Using Red Flag Alert also allows brokers to build lists of prospects that will meet credit‐checking requirements, saving a lot of wasted time down the line.
With names and contact details for key decision‐makers, Red Flag Alert also helps brokers make initial contact.
Manage Sale Data
Red Flag Alert uses an API to integrate its data into a broker’s CRM. Subsequently, all updates captured by Red Flag Alert will automatically be pushed into the broker’s CRM.
This means brokers avoid the time drag of manually updating information and the risk of teams having different information on every business.
Automatically updated information builds confidence in sales teams because they know they’re dealing with the best possible information. With B2B data decay well over 20% per year for most businesses, ensuring this data is up to date is critical for brokers looking for an edge in a competitive market.
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Improve Account-Based Marketing
Many brokers find great success by increasing revenues per client. This is done by ensuring that clients are upgraded to appropriate tariffs as they grow and that a client’s entire business portfolio is serviced by the broker.
Red Flag Alert provides brokers with the key information on their clients that enables this account‐based marketing to be successful. A broker can identify opportunities for making new sales and ensure this information is pushed to them in their CRM or inbox.
Red Flag Alert Offer – Use Data to Drive Your Brokerage
If you’re an energy broker, we’re offering a free one‐hour consultation that will focus on how data can help you reach your business goals.
One of our experts will assess how data is helping you meet business goals and build a checklist for how to make a meaningful improvement to your bottom line by becoming a data‐driven energy brokerage.
If you want to see how Red Flag Alert can help your company, and try us out for yourself, book a free trial today.
