Risk Manager of the Year - 31 March 2001
Risk Manager of the YearPaul Armstrong’s ability to keep tight control of a huge and varied customer base as risk manager for Yellow Pages has won him this award.
Paul heads up a team of ten people responsible for customer credit assessment for customers advertising in Yellow Pages and Business Pages, Talking Pages, Yell.com, BT Phonebooks, The Business Database, Servicecall and Europages. This entails defining, implementing and reviewing credit assessment for over 350,000 UK customers who place around 800,000 advertisements per annum.
His major achievements include reducing bad debt for the end of this financial year, compared with the previous year, resulting in a 5 per cent reduction in write offs.
Paul worked closely with sales teams across the country, supporting them in developing and implementing local credit assessment activity that helped produce a 20 per cent reduction in credit cancellations. He also achieved a 24-hour turnaround for credit referrals from the sales teams. “These strategies have resulted in a substantial increase in the number of orders referred for credit review and successfully released for the sale to proceed, with appropriate payment terms agreed. Sales teams have warmly greeted the marked reduction in credit cancellations,” said Cathy Johnson, senior credit manager.
Paul’s team operates in a high volume environment where credit decisions are made to very tight timescales, often shortly before a directory is about to go to press. He offers his team support with individual coaching, sharing his understanding of the sales targets and personally getting involved in complex cases. He has also implemented a complaint-handling policy, enabling his team to quickly resolve disputes with the customer.
Paul has made a number of effective credit policy changes, aimed at tackling ‘hotspots’ identified through analysis of bad debt data. This has included the creation of three high-risk classifications, where prepayment is mandatory for Yellow Pages directories.
Having played a key role in the development of an on-line credit scoring system for the sales force, Paul set up an investigation process for fraudulent activity identified by sales and service people.
Paul is quick to praise the contribution of his team: “I have been very fortunate to have an excellent team who are keen to be the best they can. I am very grateful for the support they have given me and the contribution they have made to our overall success.”
