Voice AI for BFSI and Collections

Why Indian BFSI needs voice AI now

Indian collections is not like Western collections. The regulatory environment is different, the language challenge is massive, the cultural dynamics around debt are distinct, and the unit economics have been squeezed thin by rising costs and tightening RBI norms.

A mid sized NBFC typically needs to make 100,000 to 1 million outbound collections calls per month. A large retail bank makes several million. Human capacity is capped at roughly 80 productive outbound calls per day per agent. Scaling to millions means hiring thousands, managing shifts, dealing with attrition, and accepting inconsistent quality.

ARCA changes this equation. A single deployment can handle massive concurrent call volumes. The cost does not scale linearly. The quality is consistent across every language.

Collections across the delinquency curve

Pre delinquency (0 to 5 days overdue): Most borrowers here are genuine forgetful cases. ARCA handles reminder calls in the borrower's preferred language, confirms the amount and account, and takes payment intent. NBFCs running ARCA for pre delinquency typically see 10 to 20% improvement in on time payment rates.

Early delinquency (5 to 30 days): ARCA understands why the borrower is late, offers available options within policy (defer one EMI, part payment, full catchup), gets a payment commitment with date and amount, and escalates to humans for complex cases. All within defined compliance guardrails.

Mid delinquency (30 to 90 days): ARCA assists with initial contact and data gathering, then hands off to specialist human agents with full context.

Late delinquency (90+ days): Human agents handle this stage. ARCA focuses where automation delivers the most value.

KYC verification and loan processing

ARCA handles outbound KYC verification calls, confirming identity details, collecting missing documents, and scheduling branch visits when needed. For loan processing, ARCA provides status updates, collects required information, and handles EMI calculation queries.

Balance inquiries, transaction history requests, and account service questions are handled autonomously, freeing human agents for complex financial advice.

RBI compliance built in

ARCA is built with Indian financial regulation from the ground up. The agent identifies itself as AI at the start of every call. It operates only during permitted calling hours. Every call is recorded with tamper proof audit trails. Conversation flows are policy bound, meaning the agent cannot use threatening language, make unauthorized concessions, or deviate from approved scripts.

ARCA respects borrower requests to stop calling and integrates with do not call registries. Compliance reporting is built in for internal risk teams and regulator audit.

The language and dialect reality

An NBFC doing collections across India needs Hindi (including Bhojpuri and Maithili variants), Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, Punjabi, Odia, Assamese, and others depending on geography.

Human staffing for all these languages is practically impossible beyond a handful. ARCA handles 22 Indian languages natively, which means every borrower gets contacted in their preferred language. An English only collections agent gets ignored. A Tamil agent gets a payment commitment.

Enterprise credibility for BFSI

Tenori Labs' sister company Disha Communications has 38 years of relationships with PSU clients including LIC, BSNL, and Indian Oil. This enterprise heritage means Tenori Labs understands the procurement, compliance, and operational realities of Indian financial institutions.

ARCA is designed for the compliance and scale requirements of Indian BFSI, not adapted from a Western model.

Getting started

The right starting point for BFSI is pre delinquency reminders. Low risk, high volume, easy to measure. At Tenori Labs, we run 2 week collection pilots on a single delinquency bucket, in 2 to 4 languages, measuring contact rate, payment commitment rate, and on time payment rate.