Big Data and Predictive Analytics Help HMRC Process Debt Payments More Quickly

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the UK tax authority, has transformed debt management with innovative IT to mass customize debt collection to clear or pursue late payments more quickly. HMRC, along with Capgemini, implemented the flexible analytics-based systems at the heart of process improvement and behavioural insights campaigns that help HMRC safeguard Exchequer cash flow funding for public services.

The Solution

Analytics for DEbtor Profiling and Targeting (ADEPT) is a closed loop 13.5 terabyte big data analytics system, with a debt management system and a decision engine. It automatically combines data from 20 internal and external systems and monitors a wide variety of changes which affect up to a million debts each day. Debt information – such as payments made or missed, records of notes from the field force, and letters returned as undeliverable – is integrated with socio-demographic and other data. ADEPT transforms the data and creates a single source of business intelligence for debt management.

ADEPT can also be used to drive operations and embeds continuous learning and improvement into debt processes. It can evaluate customer response to HMRC interventions and re-calculate behaviour models and risk profiles. The decision rules engine assigns customized sequences of collection interventions to each debt, and the debt management system allocates each case to the relevant channel. By integrating ADEPT’s big data approach with legacy batch-processing, HMRC achieves flexibility and speed at the same time as maintaining resilience of business critical systems that thousands of HMRC staff rely on to do their jobs.

The Results

HMRC has replaced conventional debt processing systems with an innovative IT solution capable of mass customizing debt collection interventions based on insights into customer behaviour. Flexible, analytics-based collections have underpinned a key part of HMRC’s Debt Management Change Programme, which is well on its way to delivering targeted benefits of over £3billion additional debt collected by March 2015. HMRC has the intelligence, flexibility and speed to agree intervention strategies in days, implement changes at low cost, analyze their effectiveness, and continually improve the success rate of each business activity.