Managing a Consumer Lending Business, 2nd edition, summarizes the lore and knowledge of the business in the early 21st century. It covers many subjects a good manager should know: the importance of how to attract enough good accounts to offset the inevitable bad accounts that every lender will get, controlling line sizes, encouraging use by good customers/controlling the use by bad customers, managing profitability with predictability, if he or she is to effectively run a high-volume consumer business.
The second edition covers some of the problems the financial services industry experienced in the early 2000s and some of the resulting regulations implemented. The updated MIS demonstrates and compares this later period to earlier results for the industry.
David Lawrence and Arlene Solomon together run a training program in the management of consumer lending for major financial institutions domestically and worldwide.
David has over forty years' experience in the consumer lending business. Over nine of these years were at Citicorp, where he was the Senior Credit Officer of the consumer banking group and later its representative on the Credit Policy Committee. David created the bank's first training program for senior management on the consumer credit process.
He is the author of both the 1984 Citicorp publication Risk and Reward -- the Craft of Consumer Lending and the 1992 Prentice Hall publication, The Handbook of Consumer Lending, a leading work on the management and control of the high volume consumer lending business. He was also Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Consumer Lending.
Prior to joining Citicorp, David was with Ford Motor Company for 21 years. There, he held a variety of positions which included launching and managing credit businesses in Australia, the Philippines, Japan, and Taiwan.
Arlene has extensive experience in consulting for a wide range of businesses. In addition to general consulting in organization and training issues, Arlene's company designs and develops training and general communications programs. The work frequently involves collaboration with senior subject matter experts in complex areas, thus blending content and training expertise.
Arlene's firm has been involved in developing training courses for senior managers in planning and implementing principles of credit, marketing, advertising, and data processing. Her firm also develops courses in product knowledge, sales and general management.