ACI Financial Services, a Perch Group company, has built its reputation on doing debt resolution differently. With a focus on tailored, affordable repayment plans and genuine support for customers navigating financial difficulty, ACI combines consumer-facing empathy with the scale and infrastructure of one of the UK’s leading credit management groups.

For ACI, affordability assessment isn’t a compliance checkbox, it’s central to how they build trust with customers and deliver outcomes that stick. That means the tools they use to conduct Income & Expenditure assessments need to meet an exceptionally high bar: accurate, consistent, auditable, and capable of handling real-world complexity without slowing agents down or degrading the customer experience.

Critically, ACI had the in-house technical capability to build something themselves. But they were clear-eyed about what that would and wouldn’t deliver. Building a generic tool is one thing. Replicating years of specialist development, domain expertise, and regulatory alignment in the affordability space is another.

So, they decided to run a proof of concept using our tool to see whether it delivered.

The roll out of Inicio wasn’t by default. ACI chose Inicio on the merits.

What set Inicio apart wasn’t just functionality, it was the combination of specialist expertise and regulatory credibility that no generalist AI solution could match. As an FCA-regulated business, Inicio is purpose-built for the affordability space, with every element of the platform designed around the compliance requirements and human realities of income and expenditure assessment.

For a business like ACI, operating in a regulated environment and committed to genuine customer outcomes, that distinction mattered.

ACI deployed Inicio across two channels, giving customers the option to complete their income and expenditure assessment themselves, and giving agents an intelligent tool to guide them through the same process on calls.

The self-serve channel was a significant addition. Customers can now complete a full I&E assessment in their own time, at a pace that suits them, through a guided digital experience that asks the right questions, prompts them to think about expenditure categories they might otherwise overlook, and flags figures that seem out of the ordinary. The result is a more accurate, more complete picture of a customer’s finances, captured without the pressure of a live conversation. Completion rates and data quality both improved as a direct consequence.

For telephony agents, Inicio works alongside them in real time, structuring the assessment, prompting for the right information, and handling the complexity so agents can focus on the customer rather than the process. Assessments that previously required significant time and skill to conduct well became something any agent could complete with accuracy and confidence.

Both channels draw on the same underlying intelligence, so whether a customer engages digitally or speaks to an agent, the quality and consistency of the assessment is the same.

ACI also integrated Open Banking data into the process via D.One, which was already embedded within the Inicio solution, a straightforward integration that added real-time visibility of customer income and spending patterns, further improving accuracy and reducing reliance on self-reported figures alone.

All of this sits within a fully auditable framework. Every assessment is recorded, every AI-generated insight is visible, and there are no black box decisions. Compliance teams can see exactly what happened, what the AI identified, and what the outcome was, meeting regulatory expectations without adding operational burden.

The most significant outcome for ACI wasn’t simply an improvement in a single metric. It was the ability to move from the current Income & Expenditure assessment to Inicio’s affordability assessment without compromising operational performance.

Traditionally, moving to a new process creates challenges. Customers have more information to disclose, affordability assessments become more detailed, and repayment offers can reduce as a result. Organisations often see increased handling times, lower productivity, or pressure on collection performance during the transition.

That wasn’t the case at ACI.

Using Inicio, ACI successfully transitioned while maintaining operational performance and delivering the richer affordability data increasingly expected by major lenders and financial institutions.

For ACI’s Tier 1 banking clients, this is particularly important. Full I&E assessments provide a more complete picture of a customer’s circumstances, support stronger affordability decisions, and create a more robust audit trail for regulatory and compliance purposes.

Just as importantly, the experience improved for frontline teams.

Agents consistently reported that the process felt easier and more intuitive than previous approaches. Rather than having to remember expenditure categories, navigate complex questioning paths, or worry about missing key information, Inicio guides the conversation and prompts for the right information at the right time.

The result is greater consistency across teams, reduced reliance on individual agent experience, and significantly lower training overheads for new starters.

What could have been a more complex process became a simpler one.

Compliance teams benefit from a richer, fully auditable affordability assessment. Agents benefit from a process that is easier to follow. Customers benefit from a more complete assessment of their financial circumstances. And ACI is able to meet the expectations of increasingly demanding clients without sacrificing efficiency.

For ACI, the value of Inicio wasn’t simply doing more assessments. It was conducting better assessments, with greater consistency, confidence and compliance, while maintaining the operational performance the business depends on.