The Middle East is developing a reputation of a ‘hard market’ referring clearly to it’s late and lack of payment system. More recently, a UK origin construction company, Carillion, collapsed in spite of running several projects across the Gulf States. The reason? The company claims that it couldn’t claw back £200m owed by a Qatar based developer. Another international company earlier this February announced of its exit plans from the Gulf after operating for nearly 30 years. This came in a bid to ‘tighten its balance sheet’. The problem of holding up payments is not just limited to international construction firms, most domestic firms are struggling in the country as well.
As per a 2018 Debt Collection survey by Euler Hermes, France based economic research organization, UAE is the second most complex country for debt collection around the world. While Sweden ranks an easy 30 on the debt collection complexity score, UAE has been termed as ‘severe’ with a high score of 81. Insolvency-related complexity has been found to be a severe challenge in the Middle East than in Western Europe, the most frequent issue being the low probability to recover a debt as an unsecured creditor in practice when the liquidation proceedings have commenced. With many international organizations wrapping their bags from the Middle East, domestic firms are struggling too. As early as 2016, nearly 800 firms had exited from the UAE due to inability to settle their dues. Previously, a November 2015 study had found that SMEs around the country were collectively owed $26 billion, rigorously handicapping the business’s ability to deliver quality projects within the decided budget and time. Especially in Metals and Construction sector, notifications of overdue payments have soared by 26%.
The severe problem of reduced repayments has not only decreased the capacity of businesses to cover expenses such as rent and power but also has led to an increase in the stress and anxiety of numerous business owners. Entering the market at the most crucial time, an artificial intelligence powered receivables management application called Dunnly promises to simplify payment collections for every business. Simply put, Dunnly assures that it will end your anxiousness around overdue receivables. In order to save businesses from bad debts, the AI-driven fin-tech solution is unique because of its predictive analysis feature based on Markov Models, enabling it to foresee the debtor’s repaying capacity.
In order to slash overdue payments, 69% of which go unpaid due to poor follow up, the application continually talks to the client’s accounting system, ensuring timely follow up with debtors. As more than half of the invoices go unpaid due to impractical payment methods, Dunnly offers collection around the globe with multiple payment options. Very interestingly, it automates the collection process by designing a series of tailored communication and a personalized follow-up strategy of the business’s debt collection by scheduling customized phone calls and email/SMS reminders.
The application was developed by Rawwbots, an IOT lab specializing in consumer intelligence applications. Dunnly was initiated around a series of questions and a constant curiosity: How could technology and data play a role in rewriting a history of distrust and lack of transparency in the payment system? Starting from the use of its own product to help small businesses with the recovery of outstanding invoices, Dunnly eventually achieved liquidation rates up to 300% higher than its customers’ incumbent providers. "Dunnly is disruptive given that it applies machine learning techniques to forecast credit risk models. Consumer debt is piling up in the Middle East and so is the problem of delinquent accounts. Many small businesses fail to recover debts on their own mainly because of a lack of legal intelligence; and possibly the lack of staff to chase the debtor. We solve that," explains Jees Raj, Founder, and designer at Rawwbots. Given the foundational problem that the company offers solutions to, a diverse clientele is able to use it: Banks & non-bank lenders, utility, Telco & insurance providers, governments, and debt purchasers. Talking about its business model, Dunnly works on a flat fee principle. If the collections are made within the second bucket, there is no success fee. We do take a flat 10% on third buckets, but that had still been competitive. The pricing model is adaptive; take a subscription or pay per invoice. Anyone can afford It." adds George Mathew, head of marketing operations.
At a time when almost after two decades, Dubai has proudly set a benchmark as one of the fastest growing nations in the world, prioritizing development of its huge infrastructure projects, an application such as Dunnly is nothing less than a savior. The smoothness it offers between every project’s stakeholders has the potential of revolving the UAE; the Dunnly team seems to be the revolutionaries aiming at changing the Middle East’s title of ‘a hard market’.
About Dunnly
Dunnly is a fintech application that turbocharges accounts receivable probabilities for small business with artificial intelligence, predictive analysis, personalized follow-ups ,multi-channel collections, and generally helps them get paid faster. Visit dunnly.com for further details.
