The challenge: collecting isn't sending a reminder, it's following up without losing the thread
In insurance, an overdue premium is a countdown. The grace period ends, the client hasn't paid, and every passing day brings the policy closer to cancellation, with everything that means for the client, who is left without coverage, and for whoever sold it, who loses the renewal.
Collecting those premiums is work nobody wants and everybody needs. You have to find the client, write to them, wait, write again, try another channel, log what they replied and remember to come back in a few days. Multiplied by hundreds of premiums, it becomes an endless list competing with everything else in an account executive's day.
And there's a hidden cost: part of that list shouldn't even be there. Policies the client already canceled, but that still show up as pending and that someone keeps chasing by hand. In August, checking against the AXA portal, we found that 26% of the pending auto amount belonged to policies already canceled.
Tienda AXA wanted its team to stop spending hours chasing premiums, and for the hours it did put into collections to go to the cases that truly needed a person.
The solution: an agent that reaches out, follows up, understands the reply and only escalates what matters
Tienda AXA launched Handle's Multi-Channel Collections agent on its portfolio of overdue premiums. Every day, the agent picks up the premiums that have left the grace period and takes care of everything that used to live in an account executive's calendar.
- 1
Scheduled daily run
44 runs in 7 weeks
- 2
Multi-channel contact
email, WhatsApp and phone
- 3
Follow-up until there's a reply
median of 2 attempts per premium
- 4
Reply classification
already paid · canceled · promise to pay
- 5
Escalation when needed
only 6% of premiums
Autonomy
94% of premiums with no human intervention
01
Contact every day, on the channel that works
The agent runs on a schedule and contacts each client by email, WhatsApp and phone. In 7 weeks it completed 44 runs and logged 1,379 events: 531 emails, 252 WhatsApp messages and 212 calls. No premium goes untouched because the week was busy.
02
Follow-up with judgment
Collections is won on the second message. The agent follows up with a contact ladder (a median of 2 attempts per premium) and switches channels when the client doesn't reply. Close to half of the contacted premiums (~46%) got a reply from the client.
03
Understands what the client replies
"I already paid" isn't the same as "I canceled the policy" or "I'll pay on Friday". The agent classifies every reply and routes it where it belongs: 49 "already paid" notices went to verification and 37 payments were confirmed by the account executive, without her having to chase them.
04
Cleans the portfolio while it collects
On 65 premiums, the client said the policy was already canceled. These are premiums that would have kept being chased by hand, week after week. Now the agent spots them in the same conversation and the portfolio gets closer to reality.
05
Escalates only what needs a person
Of 299 premiums, only 17 (6%) went to a person: 11 with no contact after the maximum number of attempts, 5 where someone other than the policyholder answered and 1 client who refused to pay. The team knows the agent will flag them when needed, and spends its time on those cases.
The results: 126 overdue premiums paid, $1.54M MXN collected and a cleaner portfolio
In its first 7 weeks, the agent took on 299 overdue premiums from 254 clients, worth $3.27M MXN. These weren't easy premiums: they had already passed their grace period unpaid.
126 of them were paid after the agent's contact: at the median, about 12 days after the grace period ended and just 4 days after the first message.
Collections results
| Outcome | Volume | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Premiums paid after contact | 126 premiums | $1.54M MXN collected, 47% of the overdue amount handled |
| Canceled policies detected | 65 premiums | Dead portfolio no longer chased by hand |
| "Already paid" notices in verification | 49 notices | The client reports it, the agent logs it and sends it for validation |
| Escalated to a person | 17 premiums | Only 6% needed the account executive, with full context |
Agent operating volume
| Activity | Volume |
|---|---|
| Emails sent | 531 |
| WhatsApp messages | 252 |
| Calls | 212 |
| Scheduled runs | 44 |
| Total | 1,379 events |
Production data as of September 29, 2026. "Paid after contact" means the premium was paid after the agent's first contact; it was not compared against a no-contact group, so it doesn't measure how much of the payment is due to the agent. Total events include, besides messages sent, replies and status changes logged by the agent.
Other key numbers for the period
254
clients contacted
299
overdue premiums handled
$3.27M
MXN in portfolio handled
~46%
premiums with a client reply
2
attempts per premium (median)
37
payments confirmed by the account executive
What's next
Seven weeks in, the agent is already part of Tienda AXA's daily collections flow. The next stage is measuring with more precision: comparing the payment rate against the months before the agent, calculating the account executive hours the agent absorbs, and understanding which channel and which point in the contact ladder close the most payments.
The goal is the same as on day one: every overdue premium gets followed up, the portfolio reflects reality, and the team's time goes to the clients who truly need a conversation.
