Initial Underwriting Group

Client: Initial Underwriting Group
Industry: Financial Services
Goal: Communicating with clients

Initial Underwriting Group
Using Vontoo to Communicate with Clients and Drive Web Site Success

In today’s current economic climate, many people are struggling to make ends meet or are going without unnecessary luxuries to save money during tough times. Individuals working in various industries and businesses of all types have been hit hard. Small businesses, in particular, are struggling with reservations about obtaining necessary funding or loans. Although many venture capitalists and angel investors still have capital to dole out, many small businesses are hesitant to take out loans and anxious about borrowing.

Initial Underwriting Group (IUG) has been in business since 2000 and has been helping build business credit since 2003. Its purpose is to help small businesses obtain funding and loans. IUG works to help small businesses discover solutions for finding the capital needed to take them to the next level. Using years of research, relationships from the past and new relationships, IUG directs small business owners to the companies that can help them find creative ways of financing.

Since small businesses are especially in need of consultation on financing during the current economic downturn, IUG is playing a particularly important role for companies today. In April 2008, the founder and owner of IUG, Ilya Bodner, took a look at how his team of underwriters was spending their time. With so much demand from clients, and around 50,000 contacts in a database who needed to be contacted, this underwriting team was placing hundreds of calls daily, spending a huge amount of time and human capital on these communications with clients.

Bodner, a proactive social networker, learned about Vontoo voice messaging through LinkedIn. He realized this service could provide an ideal solution for saving money and using employees’ time more efficiently at IUG. After initially implementing Vontoo’s technology for calling clients on a trial basis, Bodner was so pleased with the results that he signed up for a yearly rate and was able to replace human calls to clients with Vontoo messages.

“Vontoo has really turned my business around,” said Bodner. “Through its use, I’ve not only made the process of reaching clients much faster, but I’ve been able to save IUG over $15,000 a month by cutting unnecessary expenses.”

After having such success using Vontoo to contact IUG clients, Bodner is now considering using the service for marketing efforts as well – to reach out to potential clients, provide information and give them the option to speak with someone about IUG’s services. Since IUG receives around 6000 hits each month to its website from potential new business, which Bodner credits to Vontoo, he would like a means of contacting these people without having to employ callers.

“From the results we’ve achieved using Vontoo to reach our current client base, I believe the potential exists to utilize this service in marketing as well,” said Bodner. “It just makes sense – we can reach as many people as desired in a short amount of time, and we’re spending far less to send Vontoo calls than we would be on employing staff to personally make calls.”

For more information on Initial Underwriting Group, please visit initialunderwriting.org. To speak with Ilya Bodner regarding his experience with Vontoo, please call him at 614.231.3519.