Optimizing your debt collection strategy is always critical, but with economic uncertainty and an increase in delinquencies, getting it right can be especially urgent. A data-driven prioritization strategy can help improve recovery rates while minimizing time and cost loss.
With Collection Triggers℠ you can better monitor and prioritize accounts to increase your collection efforts.
Challenges for agencies and debt collection agencies
It is important to recognize the challenges that agencies and debt collectors often face. These include:
- Managing their workforce: Dealing with increased workloads will be particularly difficult for companies struggling to recruit and retain staff.
- Know who to contact: Traditional prioritization based on account age can be effective, but isn’t necessarily the best option. Ideally, you can accurately and quickly determine a consumer’s ability to pay and provide appropriate treatment at the right time.
- Maintaining accurate contact information: Text messaging and social media provide more options for collectors. Still, you need to consider consumers’ communication preferences and regularly confirm that you have the correct contact information.
- Reduce costs and improve operational efficiency: You may be asked to do more with less. This is not an easy task and you need to carefully consider which investments offer a solid return on investment.
Agencies and debt collection agencies approach these challenges in different ways. But it’s clear that it’s important to find a solution that can improve recovery rates without increasing agent workload.
What are Collection Triggers℠?
Collection Triggers from Experian is an account monitoring tool that can be customized to alert you when a “triggering” event occurs on an individual’s credit profile.
Triggers can include a new job, new contact information or a new credit line. But they can also be more detailed, such as having separate triggers for different positive improvements (e.g. a loan paid off, a car loan paid off, or an account that is 60 or 120 days in the past due to a current account).
How can debt collection triggers improve the debt collection process?
You can use collection triggers throughout the entire recovery process—from early-stage delinquencies to post-judgment accounts—to strategically prioritize your reach and increase profitability.
Specific triggers are important because you can define the triggers and monitoring criteria for your accounts. Experian can provide guidance on the most appropriate triggers based on the experiences of previous collectors.
For example, we’ve found that payment-related triggers can be very effective when it comes to collecting bank card accounts. This includes when a consumer pays off another collection account, pays off a charged-off account, or transfers an account to a new account after 120 to 180 days of delinquency.
Bank cards are just one example – triggers are helpful in collecting personal loans, medical debts, retail and other transactions. Such “positive improvements” indicate that the consumer may be willing to pay and have available resources. The time might be ideal to contact him about other outstanding obligations, as his financial situation has likely improved since your last attempt to contact him.
Contact information triggers can also spotlight accounts with a new phone number, address, or employer. And using Collection Triggers provides a clear return on investment by encouraging collectors to take action on accounts that would otherwise remain unused. Passively monitoring triggers also eliminates the need to repeatedly skip tracking older accounts.
Experian helps collectors modernize and optimize their operations
Collection Triggers is an effective, flexible and cost-efficient solution in itself. There is no upfront cost for monitoring – you only pay when a trigger event you select occurs. By taking the guesswork out of managing your portfolio, you can improve contact rates from the right parties and implement a powerful, efficient debt collection strategy.
The recovery process is time-consuming and expensive. Using collection triggers can help avoid common pitfalls when managing your portfolio and serves as a best practice for dealing with obsolete inventory. Relevant events are delivered to you in real time for the accounts you want to monitor, and you only pay for what you use.
Compare this to the alternative, which repeatedly processes the same files every month in a comprehensive attribute search across all of your accounts. This cumbersome approach requires reams of data to be collected in search of interesting nuggets. You pay for every search, even if the results are of no use to you.
Experian also offers additional solutions for collectors. For example, our skip tracing tools rely on proprietary credit and alternative data for over 245 million consumers, including unlisted phone numbers and rental payment data, to verify and update consumers’ contact information.
Or use the latest analytics approaches to segment and identify consumers who are likely to self-heal, need a reminder, or are unable to pay. We also help agencies and collectors use machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate debt collections, increase customer satisfaction and optimize processes.
Contact Experian to learn more about Collection Triggers and our debt collection solutions.
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