Lead Management - Retail Loans

Commercial banks need a large client base and healthy advances portfolio. In an effort to diversify
the lending profile, the banks have been trying leverage on huge scope present in financing small
and medium enterprises. The need for an efficient lead management is imperative, given the
circumstances. Lead management is a set of actions that enables an enterprise to have readily
available information on prospective clients for selling and cross selling its products and services to
an individual or other business entity.

The role of lead management can hardly be overstated in retail loan management. The most critial
part of loan is encapsulated in the saying "delayed credit is denied credit". Retail loan is a win-win
proposal for the customer and the organization. They are interdependent. The exposure is spread
and life cycle is considerably shorter in comparison to big borrower accounts.

A good lead management solution can enable qualified approach than a random effort. Take a case
of festive season where the spending spree is very high. An informed decision can be made while
addressing the prospects Likewise, farm sector borrowers can be targeted based on rabi or Kharif by
mapping the produce of the prospect.

There are multitude of software products in lead management. It may be custom built, acquired or
even opt for hosted models. Salesforce, ZOHO, Microsoft Dynamics are few popular products. Most
of the lead management application address the following:

Lead generation: Lead is a prospect or potential customer. The first foot print, in the road to lead
management. A lead is created or manifest through various channels. Raw data for a lead is
collected through road shows, exhibitions, on line campaigns.

Lead data capture: The data collected through various sources is captured, stratified, pooled for
further process. It is quite cliched to say in this era of digitization that data is the most valuable
asset. It is desirable to bestow best attention and care while capturing the lead data. Preferable
data attributes like contact details, demographic information, gender are essentials of a robust lead
management practice. Quality lead data is the backbone for down the line set of actions.

Lead pool: A data set of prospective customers: cleansed, de duped, and qualified for allotment to
sales force in the organization. The data attributes help in assigning leads or auto assign leads to the
field staff on the basis of area, gender, products desired. An intelligent application can prioritize the
lead at the time of pooling. A lead data having an attribute that he or she last purchased car before
5 years may well be in the top of the list of lead pool for timely sourcing of the prospect.

Activity Management: Assigned leads are followed up by Email and Telephone. Most applications
enable fixing a meeting with the prospective client. Actions and responses are good indicators as to
whether a lead is active or dormant or becomes a client. Events can be monitored by the superiors
in the hierarchy and performance can be quantified. An informed decision can be taken on the life
cycle of the lead.
User Data Management: Apart from the quality of data, user management is a milestone activity in
lead management. The user creation data set must address role, designation, skill set, role mapping,
and hierarchy mapping for efficient and effective lead management. A crystalized lead becomes an
entity in transaction processing system of the bank. Cross referencing transaction data can add value
to lead management. Credit history, spending patterns, delinquency shall become valuable inputs
for cross selling.

Money bequeaths money. Institutional finance was a privilege of the rich and wealthy. Egalitarian
society would like to ensure access to funds for small and medium enterprises. Financial inclusion
and micro lending is attracting global focus. Microfinance industry has a huge market potential from
the demand side. The exposure as of March 2017 is approximately 60,000 crores. The client base is
around 4 crores. A good lead management software sitting under the canopy of a good CRM can
augur too well for retail lending.