North of the border
Wrights Recoveries’ client services director Nick Horton and technology manager Chris Jenkins reveal how they cracked the Scottish market…
WRIGHTS RECOVERIES is not a company that does things on impulse. When it decided to launch VT Validate, its innovative tech-based voluntary termination (VT) tool, it was in response to a clear customer need. Likewise, when Wrights Recoveries began to expand into Scotland, it was a move that was driven by client demand.
“When I would meet with clients face to face – particularly our larger clients – Scotland kept coming up,” says Nick Horton, client services director at Wrights Recoveries. “They told us that they were struggling to find a reliable recoveries service north of the border. So, we took this on board and went to look at Scotland as a separate entity.
“From an operational perspective, there is a large geography involved and when we looked at coverage in certain areas, our competition was often not there. “Once we had looked at the market, we made the decision that there was sufficient work for us to further expand.”
That was at the beginning of 2016 – today, Wrights has two full-time agents based in Scotland, both of whom have been through Wrights’ rigorous training programme. Each of these agents is equipped with a specialised, modern recovery truck, which allows them to recover vehicles as quickly as possible, without having to involve a third party.
To date, business has been booming north of the border, which is a testament to Wrights’ famously diligent approach.
“We didn’t exactly take a leap of faith, rather more of an educated guess that we could develop our business up there and offer a dedicated, professional and consistent service, and that’s what happened,” says Chris Jenkins, technology manager at Wrights Recoveries.
There is clearly a lot of business for recoveries agents in Scotland – this, Jenkins says, is due to the large number of lenders north of the border. “There are a number of companies that lend in Scotland, or they’re nation-wide companies and Scotland is a part of their patch,” says Jenkins. “And then obviously vehicles move up to Scotland.
“The main problem that these lenders were finding was that the existing suppliers had minimal coverage and the coverage that they did have was managed by sub-contractors or self-employed agents. We don’t use self-employed agents – we only have employed people that work for us.” Wrights’ strategy has already paid off.
In 2018, PSA Finance – Peugeot Citroen’s finance subsidiary – launched a “champion challenge” to discover the top repossession companies in the UK. Wrights Recoveries won by a mile, achieving a first phase recovery rate of 90 per cent over a four-month period. Wrights is now PSA Finance’s major asset recovery supplier.
“While Scotland remains to be an Achilles heel for a number of suppliers, it’s actually become one of our strength areas,” says Jenkins. By maintaining a measured approach to its business and going where the demand is, Wrights is destined to go from strength to strength as a truly nation-wide recoveries business.