Justlease is a smart and innovative private lease provider. The company started in 2012 with the goal of changing the world of car leasing. Its motto? “Automate every process that is repetitive.” We spoke to Robin Bonarius (Sr. Business Owner) and Stijn Claessens (Sales Manager) about their approach to underwriting processes based on ‘source data’ and thereby dramatically increase their lead to order fulfillment.
Results
- Innovated their process fulfillment time greatly: From lead to order can be completed within 2:41 minutes
- Reduction of the amount of people needed to fulfill the credit processes
- Time reduction and more ease for the clients in the customer journey; their journey is easier as they gather all the requested data directly from the original digital sources
The lead-up
Attempt 1: digital reading of supplied documents
The fact that the solution would lie in digitalisation was evident. In 2017, the first steps were taken to convert documents into digital data fields using document scanning technology. Expectations were high, but these first attempts led to some disappointment. Only a limited proportion of documents could be digitally processed in this way and the vast majority still required manual checking. There had to be another solution.
Taking cues from the mortgage industry
Around the same time, in 2018, the mortgage industry really started to dive into source data (= raw and unprocessed data, directly from the original source). Bonarius says: “I read in the press and on LinkedIn that mortgage advisers were starting to use source data to provide this kind of data in an accelerated manner. That’s when I called Ockto’s Sales Manager and said, ‘We need to have a chat’. And that’s how we came to the topic of source data.”
Goal: All required data in a single session
For maximum customer convenience, Justlease wanted to ensure that everything could be submitted in one session. During their initial discussions, however, Ockto was only supplying government sources, but that was not enough for Justlease.
Bank transactions & driver’s licence check
Bonarius: “To start working with Ockto, it was important for us that bank transactions were also available, and we had to make sure that the driver’s licence was included.” Bank transactions were fortunately already on their way and Ockto soon prioritised the addition of a driving licence check. Claessens adds: “I’m very pleased with how the things we really need are submitted quickly, such as income declarations of self-employed clients.”
Adjustments to working methods
To ensure that all the necessary data could be retrieved in a single session, Justlease also looked closely at its own working methods. “Our entrepreneurial spirit ensures that we looked at this creatively and pushed the boundaries wherever possible,” Bonarius says. He continues: “For example, the employer’s declaration – we stopped using that. We’d still have to have that submitted separately and we don’t want to do that. We now look at the history provided by the UWV, the Dutch public employment services organisation. If someone has always had a consistent income, they’re good.”
What value does it add?
Claessens: “To put it concretely: we go from lead to order in 2 minutes, 41 seconds. So that’s from a lease request on the website to a signed contract. At the average leasing company, we’d be looking at five working days. And what’s more, we process more files with fewer employees.” Justlease currently works with two pipelines: a regular (manual) pipeline and the Ockto pipeline. The manual pipeline has been fully optimised in six years. Now the focus has turned to optimising the Ockto process.
Reduction in FTE
As it stands, the number of full-time credit acceptors has been halved. But there’s much more to be achieved in this. Bonarius: “In my view, the dropout rate will eventually become so small that only a third will remain.” He continues: “And perhaps the most important thing is the customer journey. The time savings for the customer and the convenience of not having to search for all kinds of data anymore.”
Further optimisation
For Justlease, the value of source data lies mainly in the fact that everything is delivered in just one go. Claessens: “What I think needs to be improved in the customer journey is that when a data source is down, we still have to ask the customer for more information so that everything is submitted. We don’t want to have to call the customer and ask anything more of them.”
“We not only wanted to be the first private lease company to use source data, but also to establish a super-fast process”Straight-through processing and maximum efficiency
It won’t take them much longer, but Justlease still falls shy of STP (straight-through processing). Claessens: “The only thing holding us back now are residential charges from bank transactions. That categorisation is not yet quite ready to always go through automatically, so those are still manually retrieved by the credit approver from the supplied data. We still need to take some steps there.”
“And focus on maximum efficiency,” adds Bonarius, as he keeps the competition in mind. “We not only wanted to be the first private lease company to use source data, but also to establish a super-fast process.”
Interested in a brainstorm to see what source data can do for your process? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
