The Challenge
As a leading retail finance platform, Phoenix Financial Services empowers tradespeople to offer point-of-sale financing, helping their customers access the products and services they need with flexible payment options. However, as Phoenix scaled, so did the demand for compliance checks and customer support, creating bottlenecks that absorbed team time and resources.
Phoenix needed an AI partner who could reduce these operational burdens while ensuring accuracy and human oversight. The goal was to use AI Agents and Conversational AI to free up team members to focus on strategic, value-accretive tasks that drive growth and enhance customer experience.
Why Fifty One Degrees?
Phoenix chose Fifty One Degrees for its proven track record in AI strategy and human-centred design. Known for practical AI implementations, Fifty One Degrees specialises often recommends and implements “human-in-the-loop” solutions — essential for some regulated industries where oversight is critical. This partnership promised not only automation but also the flexibility for human input where it matters most.
The Solutions
1. Automated Compliance Monitoring
Fifty One Degrees designed and delivered a custom, stand-alone AI agent that automates the entire IAR monitoring process from end to end.
The agent systematically scrapes all associated web pages, social media profiles, and images from an IAR’s digital footprint, using OCR to extract text from images. It then evaluates all this content against a sophisticated set of custom rules to detect non-compliant language.
Finally, the agent automatically generates a JSON report detailing all failures and warnings, which is sent directly into Phoenix’s core systems. This solution perfectly embodies the “human-in-the-loop” model, automating the mundane checks and flagging only high-priority exceptions for human review.
2. Voice AI for Customer Call Automation
To streamline customer support, Fifty One Degrees has designed and is implementing a voice AI solution that manages routine inquiries and directs complex conversations to human team members. This automation enhances response times, improves customer satisfaction, and allows service representatives to dedicate more time to addressing unique customer needs. Built with human-in-the-loop functionality, the voice AI transfers calls seamlessly when necessary, ensuring personalised service without disruption.
The Impact
With Fifty One Degrees’ solutions, Phoenix transformed its operational efficiency. The compliance agent, in particular, delivered a clear and compelling return on investment:
- Radical Efficiency The agent automated the most mundane and repetitive aspects of compliance, freeing up the team to focus on remediation, training, and managing high-risk issues, creating a 70% uplift in productivity.
- Enhanced Scalability Phoenix gained the ability to increase monitoring frequency by 12x (from quarterly to weekly) without any additional headcount, effortlessly handling the network’s growth.
- Reduced Regulatory Risk The solution ensures 100% of the IAR network is monitored consistently, creating a comprehensive and auditable trail of compliance checks to satisfy both internal stakeholders and regulators like the FCA.
- Improved Network Performance Based on initial checks, 19% of IARs were rated as “marginal” or “fail”. The agent provided the data needed to proactively manage and reduce this number, improving the overall quality of the IAR network.
This partnership has allowed Phoenix to reclaim valuable team hours and enhance the customer journey—all while adhering to a high standard of compliance and care.
Conclusion
Phoenix Financial Services’ experience shows how AI-driven automation can free resources and boost operational efficiency in the retail finance industry. With Fifty One Degrees’ human-in-the-loop approach, Phoenix has achieved a balance between efficiency and human oversight, ultimately refocusing its team on strategic growth and enhanced customer care.
