It’s Dentistry’s Turn To Open Wide

Finance and tech leader Vivek Kumar is keen on solving two of dentistry’s toughest struggles: customer service and revenue generation

For many dental patients, covering the cost of treatment is a pay-at-the-pump proposition. If you don’t have private or employee-sponsored healthcare insurance or you receive government-sponsored healthcare, you pay up front. On the flipside, dental service organizations (DSOs) are seriously constrained by the lack of payment plans for their patients. The dearth of options chomps into their revenue generation, stunting growth in an industry where margins float at a staggering 70 to 80%.

Thanks to a credit expert with a knack for frugality, building product, and choosing innovative technology partners and his “very skinny team” of five people, the future for DSOs has brightened in a big way. Their solution: partner with a cutting-edge tech developer to create an in-house “mini-fintech,” as well as using AI to improve the patient experience – for a capital investment of less than $1 million.

Vivek Kumar

Our team recently spoke with the project’s visionary leader, Vivek Kumar. His expertise in credit risk, underwriting management, advanced analytics, and product development is just one aspect of his 20-plus year career as an executive in banking and fintech, including stints at Goldman Sachs, Santander, US Bank, and HSBC/Capital One. Kumar has experience across the banking landscape, working with medium and small institutions as well as the heavy hitters.

Financing may not be much of an issue for patients with financial resources and good credit, but for those in the middle and lower economic tiers, getting credit can be more painful than a root canal. Working with a lender can mean denials followed by multiple application processes to get eligibility for different programs. “Nobody has time for that,” he asserted.

Kumar and his team pioneered a cascading platform in partnership with Provenir and other technology partners, whose state-of-the-art credit decision engine is revolutionizing the credit decision-making process. The platform uses AI and real-time data analytics to streamline the application process, not only accelerating decision-making but also improving the quality of credit decisions.

The alternative is submitting a single application with five lenders queued up for underwriting. Kumar explains it this way: “If you get credit from a prime lender, perfect, you’re golden. But don’t be sad. If a prime lender is not approving you, I have a near-prime lender for you.” If near prime is a no-go, there’s a subprime lender available to cover most of the cost of treatment. The strategy works well; however, the slim margins on a subprime loan won’t contribute much to the business.

“If a DSO or Healthcare provider doesn’t want to lose the business, they can always implement in-house financing at the bottom of their tech stack, which is transformative,” he recommended. “A retail dentistry organization or a medical provider needs to have cash coming in so that you can run the clinics, so we made sure that balances out as well.”

The team employed AI-driven customer service and collection technology to create a sophisticated bilingual chatbot that handles admin tasks that include scheduling as well as collection and promise to pay calls. “A significant portion of our consumer base were Hispanic, and when we were offering credit financing or solutions, our previous systems were not bilingual,” he said. AI greatly improved the customer experience, which Kumar notes will boost conversion rates.

“I think the industry is still very early when it comes to building, developing, and implementing machine learning models and AI solutions,” he pondered. “With vendors like Provenir and others, we were able to develop ML credit scoring models, an ML loss forecast model (CECL) and collection models, scorecard models and eventually implemented them so the business could benefit from leveraging sophisticated, complex ML/AI models and tools.

“They were very responsive. They understood our business issue and how to solve for it. It was a collaborative effort involving both of us.” Pricing was also a key factor. “Even though they are one of the best in the industry, they did come down for us given the use case of healthcare. We got really good pricing that helped us in making that decision.”

Kumar’s well-rounded expertise helped in understanding the overall business problem and the desired outcomes. “And being in the field gaining the firsthand operation experience and asking what offices need as a solution gave me and my team an upper edge to design this solution and implement it.”

DSOs face hurdles in actually finding tech that will unify and simplify their systems and processes and help them deliver great customer service for patient financing. Kumar advises leaders in the sector to consider the potential of the trailblazing platform and encourages them to adjust their thinking on ROI. “There’s going to be an initial hump of return on investment. You’re going to spend some money on the technology and then the return comes in the first three or six months,” he cautioned. “Leaders should have that kind of mid- to long-term vision when they’re building these systems.”

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Vivek Kumar is a leading executive professional in financial services, fintech, and banking with experience in credit risk and underwriting management, advanced analytics, collection, operations, revenue cycle, ML/AI model development, product, financial analysis, P&L management, CECL/loss forecasting, governance and regulation, project management, and capital raising. Strong domain knowledge general manager skill with unique business executive acumen & approach. A thought leader and visionary, Kumar has an excellent record of building and leading high performing teams.