Archives for November 2021

CHICAGO, Ill. —  A new report by TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) and
Aite-Novarica Group found that the collections industry is boosting hiring and
technology investments as it transitions into a “next normal” stage.
Approximately seven in 10 collections professionals (69%) said technology
solution spending will modestly or significantly increase in the next two
years. About two-thirds of collections professionals (67%) said employee
compensation will increase in the same time period. 

 

The report, “A Transition to the Next Normal:
The Collections Industry in 2021,” provides the latest annual
look at the trends, challenges and opportunities in the U.S. third-party
collections industry. The report is informed by a survey of 151 third-party
debt collection professionals and interviews with 12 industry thought leaders
conducted in Q2 and Q3 2021.

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The ramp up in tech and employee investments
is occurring against a backdrop of a growing collections employment market. The
number of collections employees is expected to increase to 137,928 in 2021
compared to 134,347 in 2020, though it remains below 2018 levels (139,273).

 

The collections industry is experiencing
modest employee growth even as industry activity slowed in recent years.
According to the report, in Q3 2021, 77.6 million consumers had at least one
collection tradeline, collectively totaling $188 billion in outstanding
balances—a 1% and 3% decline, respectively, from year-end 2020. 

 

“After a better than expected pivot to remote
work and surprisingly good collection rates in 2020, 2021 has brought greater
uncertainty for the collections industry,” said Jason Klotch, vice president of
third party collections in TransUnion’s diversified markets business. “While
collections performance continues to be a bright spot, particularly for larger
companies, reduced account volumes, a changing regulatory environment and
shifts in the consumer credit market are among the challenges the industry is
facing today. Companies, though, expect more accounts to be placed in
collections in the coming year and investing in new technologies and employees
is critical for the anticipated volume increase.”

 

Technological advancements key for future of
industry

While letters and phone calls continue to be nearly universal
approaches for collectors communicating with consumers, the use of text
messaging has become more common. More than three in 10 respondents (31%)
reported that their company uses this channel today compared to 22% in 2020 and
16% in 2019.

The report also found that use of technologies such as online
payment portals has multiple benefits: 1) they may be preferable to certain
customers who do not want to have a human interaction and want to deal with
their debt at a time of their choosing; 2) this service is beneficial due to
the limitation on outbound telephone calls that will take effect with the implementation
of new regulatory requirements.

While certain technological tools have been adopted somewhat
uniformly across the industry, others are far more likely to be in use at
larger companies. Medium and large companies have similar adoption rates for online
payment portals and predictive scoring tools and at generally much higher rates
than smaller companies.

Larger Collections
Agencies More Apt to Use New or Recent Technologies

Employees will be a major differentiator

Advancements in technology have also allowed
more employees in the collections industry to work from home. More importantly,
this practice could help companies retain more of their top employees. Since
the onset of the pandemic, 87% of larger companies represented in the survey
had collection agents shift to remote work compared to 43% for smaller
companies.

 

Companies that shifted to a remote working
environment in response to the pandemic largely expect to continue to offer at
least some degree of remote work in the future. This most often takes the form
of a hybrid arrangement, rather than never going in to the office. As one
interviewee in the report noted, “Unless there’s a regulatory or client-driven
requirement to be in the office, most companies appear to be okay with some
sort of hybrid model.”

 

Nearly two-thirds (64%) of companies are either
considering or already offering remote work arrangements for new hires. This
consideration of remote work is distributed among a variety of roles, including
collection agents. The main reason companies are considering remote working
arrangements? Approximately 71% say it is to attract better applicants and 62%
say it is to increase employee retention. One-third (33%) said it was to reduce
costs.

 

“The last two years have proven how resilient
the collections industry can be, and as account activity increases it is clear
that the agencies that are investing in technology and talent will be best
prepared when the market shifts,” concluded Klotch.

 

To download the full report, please click here.

 

About the report

 

Insights on the challenges, trends, and
innovations occurring in the third-party collections industry are informed by a
quantitative survey of third-party debt collection professionals conducted in
Q3 2021. A detailed look at the composition of survey respondents is provided
in the appendix. Survey results are representative of the market at a 95%
confidence interval with an 8-point margin of error. This is the third annual
survey of the third-party collections industry conducted by TransUnion and
Aite-Novarica Group. The full report is available here.

 

About Aite-Novarica Group

 

Aite-Novarica Group is an advisory firm
providing mission-critical insights on technology, regulations, strategy, and
operations to hundreds of banks, insurers, payments providers, and investment
firms—as well as the technology and service providers that support them.
Comprising former senior technology, strategy, and operations executives as
well as experienced researchers and consultants, our experts provide actionable
advice to our client base, leveraging deep insights developed via our extensive
network of clients and other industry contacts. Visit us on the web and connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About TransUnion (NYSE: TRU)

TransUnion
is a global information and insights company that makes trust possible in the
modern economy. We do this by providing an actionable picture of each
person so they can be reliably represented in the marketplace. As a result,
businesses and consumers can transact with confidence and achieve great things.
We call this Information for Good.®

A
leading presence in more than 30 countries across five continents, TransUnion
provides solutions that help create economic opportunity, great experiences and
personal empowerment for hundreds of millions of people.

http://www.transunion.com/business

Bob Deter, VP of Business Development at Crown Asset Management, has been in the industry for a long time. Check out our Think Differently interview with him, where he discusses how best to find a partner for debt sale, plus:

• The optimal time to sell accounts
  
• What makes a debt buyer stand out in a crowd
  
• How to calculate the value of your portfolio

Watch Erin’s interview with Bob here, or read it below.

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Erin:

Hi everyone. And thank you so much for joining today’s edition of Think Differently. I’m Erin Kerr. I am the Director of Content for iA Strategy and Tech, as well as the Executive Director of the Innovation Council. Think Differently is a feature of the Innovation Council. And today I’m here with Bob Deter from Crown Asset Management. Bob, thank you so much for being here today.

Bob:

Yeah, thanks for having me here. And I appreciate the time to chat with you and share some information.

Erin:

Yeah, absolutely. I’m really excited because this is not an area I know a ton about. But why don’t we start with you telling us a little bit about yourself?

Bob:

Absolutely. I have been around the industry for 33 plus years. Always in some sort of a collection recovery focus. I started my career at Discover Card. I ultimately spent 17 years there, beginning in collections and ending my time there managing and running their debt sales. From there, I moved over to the purchasing side of the industry and that was about 16 years ago. After that, I spent several years managing regulatory compliance and most recently I have gotten back into the space that I really enjoy and that’s the debt purchasing and sales space. And I currently serve as the Vice President of Business Development for Crown Asset Management. You’ll probably hear me refer to ourselves as CAM later on.

Erin:

Great. And I am going to take the opportunity to also refer to you guys as CAM  going forward in the interview. It sounds like you’ve been around a while. You have great experience from both the issuer side and the buyer side, and it sounds like you really love what you’re doing. So can you tell me why you love it so much?

Bob:

Yeah, I do. I’ve always enjoyed the relationship building that comes with the purchase and sale type of transactions, but, you know, and in particular, when you can work for a company like CAM where we’ve got good leadership and look, I’m not saying this is exclusive to CAM, right, but in the industry, but in particular, I’m really happy to be in a position where we’ve got a leadership team that is focused on building long-term partnerships, providing, exceptional ease of doing business with our clients and all of our partners and you know, where we have a really talented people. I’ve been around for a while. There’s a lot of talent in the industry and I’m just thrilled to be back in a position where I can meet with those folks and network with those folks.

Erin: 

Yeah. And that’s great. With all these experiences that you have, if you were talking to someone who was thinking about maybe selling, you know, someone on the seller’s side, what would you tell them to look for in a partner there?

Bob:

Yeah. You know, I think it’s important to look for a partner that does provide you an ease of doing business. Somebody that’s going to protect your brand as well, you want somebody that’s got a team with a wide variety of experience. So, our team is an example. We’ve got experience in everything from investment banking and advisory roles to commercial and capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and experience selling accounts. We’ve got part of our team that has been in the executive seats of collection agencies and all of that combines to allow us to understand the entire business from a very unique perspective. So you definitely want to look for a partner that’s got a well-rounded background.

Erin:

Right. And that makes a lot of sense. But going back to one of the first things you said there, what do you mean by ease of doing business and brand protection?

Bob:

Yeah. That’s a great question. So you want somebody who’s got a team that is going to not just work to meet service level expectations, but also to minimize the efforts that you, as their partner, have to put into everything from the transaction itself to post-sale support. You know, I mean, having contracts in place to govern the transaction is a must. But you want a team that’s going to actively look for ways to improve the experience, to make life easy for you. It may just be some simple automation that they can provide you, it could be taking on a few analytics tasks. But you want to find somebody that’s got experience and a relationship that’s going to benefit both of you, no matter how easy it is to conduct a transit action, if your brand isn’t protected, it doesn’t mean a lot, right? So find somebody that’s got, you know, an operational team and a compliance team that will work together to develop service level expectations of their, you know, their servicing partners. And it’s going to be able to, you know, audit and oversee those expectations, not just from the operational standpoint, but also from the compliance standpoint. Right? So that you can ensure that the customers that are being served are being treated with dignity and fairness.

Erin:

Thanks for explaining all that. And that might be obvious to some of our audience, but it wasn’t super obvious to me. So I appreciate you going through that. You must see many different collection and recovery strategies being implemented by issuers before they sell their accounts. What do you think is the most effective strategy?

Bob: 

Yeah. You know, often when you hear that question, people shift their mind to things like, should I sell my accounts at the point of charge off, or place them with agencies first? How long should I leave them with agencies? Should I scrub the accounts or let my partner do that? You know, all of those things are really important considerations, but I think the best answer to the question is very simply: flexibility. A collection and recovery strategy that has flexibility is really the best strategy.

Erin: 

So can you tell me a little bit more about, in your mind, what that flexibility looks like?

Bob:

Of course, you know, flexibility is really what enables you to be nimble, to react to any given environment at any given time. What’s best today is not necessarily going to be best in six months. You’re going to want to be conscientious about the structure that you build and the limitations that it has. Now, let me give you an example. If you have a pure agency placement strategy and you’re suddenly hit with an increase in delinquencies, can your current agencies absorb that volume effectively and give the accounts proper treatment, right? What’s your backup plan to effectively manage those accounts in a timely manner? Boarding an agency is a very long process in today’s world, and that’s where incorporating that sales into your strategy can really add critical flexibility. And the example that I mentioned, having a purchasing partner that can absorb a large volume of accounts, really, provides you not only instant cash, but an outlet that ensures the timely treatment that the consumers deserve.

Erin:

Okay. Earlier you mentioned providing partners with a total liquidation strategy. What do you mean by that?

Bob:

Yeah, so what I’m really referring to is an end of the collection efforts, right. You think about, at what point do you, as an issuer, want to stop spending your time on collections and spend your time elsewhere? Or do you want your employees to keep working accounts for an extended period of time? Or would you rather say, hey, you know, we’re at a point where we’d rather shift those resources into preventing our write-offs or managing the growth of performing portfolios, you know, whatever that point in time happens to be, and that sale is a great tool to get that final liquidation and refocus your time and efforts and expenses.

Erin:

So what’s the optimal point in time for an issuer to sell accounts?

Bob:

Yeah, that really depends on the issuer’s appetite for managing in-house collection agents, as well as collection vendors. It also depends on their larger corporate objectives. So in my opinion, and I know this isn’t super specific, but it’s somewhere between the point of charge off and a third agency recall that would put the accounts typically say between zero and 18 months post charge off.

Erin:

Okay. And why is that the optimal point in time?

Bob:

It’s really a combination of price sensitivity and corporate objectives. You know, the older that an account gets, the less valuable it becomes. And once it gets close to the statute of limitations, there’s minimal value. If you’re a huge organization and you have the resources to spend the time and the expenses to put out associated with internal collections or vendor management, you may want to hold those accounts through several agency cycles, but if you’re more cash sensitive or your corporate objective is to grow the portfolio, the profitable portfolio, then you’re probably better off to get the cash from a sale at the point of charge off and reinvest that into the core business.

Erin:

So this is probably a really good time to ask the question that I’ve sort of always wondered, which is how does a seller know what their accounts are worth? Do they just say, hey, at the end of my current agency cycle, I’ve collected X amount of dollars. So I expect the buyer to pay X, like, how does that work?

Bob:

Yeah. It’s not quite that simple, right? So you have to remember to back out  expenses, you know, after all those are things that the buyer is going to have to incur. And remember you want to build a long-term partnership. One that you can both rely on the buyer has to be able to make a reasonable return on their investment, right? They’re not going to be around in the future to continue purchasing your accounts if they can’t make a profit. So, you know, if you collect internally, you’re going to want to consider things like the cost of scrubbing your accounts, both the labor and the hard costs, like the cost of sending letters. So your phone system and things of that nature, those are all expenses that are really going to go away, or at least be drastically reduced when you sell your accounts.

Also, some additional cash that you’re going to put in, you know, than what you would have spent on those items, you’re going to be able to put that to work for you, investing in your core business. And a very important piece is applying a net present value, a reasonable net present value. That’s really where your partner gets their room for profit. You know, again, you can invest that cash. Think of it as, you know, a compounding effect that cash has when you get that invested over time, it’s just going to return multiples of what you get at the actual time of sale. It’s relatively simple math. You just have to include all parts of the equation.

Erin:

Okay. So, as a seller, once you’ve made your decision on when to sell what happens next?

Bob:

Next, you really need to find the right partner. You’re going to want someone like CAM  that’s been around the block. Somebody that’s demonstrated the wherewithal would stand sudden and unexpected market changes. It would take the recession of 2009-2010. For example, it came on fast and it hit people hard. So if you have a partner that can withstand that, that’s a good sign. You want to find a partner, also,that’s developed long-term relationships. If they have long-term relationships, it’s a really good indicator, their willingness to be a true partner, someone that understands how to help you out when you need help. Sometimes there are bumps in the road, right? And you’re going to want somebody that can work with you that has brought industry knowledge to help you get through that and make the transaction successful.

Erin:

Is there anything else that makes a purchasing partner different or maybe stand out in the crowd?

Bob:

Yeah. You know, absolutely. As you look for a partner, remember that both the seller and the buyer are going to want to go through a diligence process. So you’re going to want a partner that, you know, welcomes you to ask questions, frankly, that welcomes you to visit their office and put them through a rigorous review, a partner that’s going to work with you again to ensure that that transaction is successful for both of you

Erin:

And, how can a purchasing partner help ensure that the seller is successful?

Bob:

That’s a really important point. You know, you’re going to want the partner that looks out for you, not just for themselves. I kind of touched on this a little bit ago, but, you know, for example, during the diligence process, expect questions about your partner. You want a partner that’s going to not just take everything as is and run with it, even if they don’t understand it. They’re going to ask you some questions about data points. Can they have additional data points? It’s important for the sellers to provide that information. So the buyer can thoroughly understand the portfolio and work it compliantly after all that leads back to brand protection, right? If they’re not compliant it’s not going to add very much protection for you. I can’t tell you how many times we would ask for even documents and the seller would say, hey, I’ll check on that. And nobody’s asked that before.. And that more often happens with new sellers, but they’re usually glad that we brought it to their attention and explained the value and importance that it has. Maybe just another quick example, you should expect edits on your purchase and sale agreement. We have had before, you know, we would ask for something and the seller would literally look at that and go, hey, that’s a great idea. You know, that actually adds protection for us as well. So you want that kind of a partner. If they’re not asking questions, then I’d be a little cautious.

Erin:

Yeah. Definitely makes a lot of sense. So, given all of that and everything you’ve shared, what do you make of what has been described as a kind of crazy collections and recovery environment over the last 18 months? I mean, it’s been a crazy environment generally, but specifically in collections and recovery.

Bob:

Yeah. It has been crazy. I would just say, this too shall pass. It’s certainly not what most of us expected at the onset of the pandemic. But, it’s going to normalize at some point, you know, without the benefit of the crystal ball, but yet based on a lot of conversation I’ve had in the industry, I would think somewhere in the second and third quarter of 2022, we’re going to see some sort of at least a beginning of normalization in the general marketplace.

Erin:

Okay. Well, that’s comforting, I guess. So thank you so much, Bob. We covered a lot today and I’d like to ask you for one last thought for those that may have not already incorporated debt sales into their collection and recovery strategy, can you give us a quick, just, you know, high level summary of the benefits of a debt of debt sales?

Bob:

In short, that sales provide diversification and flexibility that I mentioned early on, you know, they really allow you to reduce your ongoing capital expenditures that are associated with the FTE and debt collections, vendor management, a sale will allow you to immediately liquidate the high expense and low returning portfolios. You’re going to immediately get the long term value of the non-performing loans. And, you know, perhaps most importantly, you can take your time and expenses at your time and money and shift those to resources that are more strategic to your operation, you know, reinvest those proceeds into a growing portfolio that returns a really nice profit.

Erin:

Well, I think that sums it up really well. And that’s a great piece of advice for anyone in our audience who’s thinking about incorporating debt sale into their strategy. So I really appreciate you sharing that with me as well as everything else that we talked about today. So, thanks again, Bob, for being here with me today for this edition of Think Differently. Again, this is, um, part of the iA Innovation Council.

 

 

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iA Innovation Council is a collaborative working group of product, tech, strategy, and operations thought leaders at the forefront of analytics, communications, payments, and compliance technology. Group members meet in person (and lately, virtually) several times each year to engage in substantive dialogue and whiteboard sessions with the creative thinkers behind the latest innovations for the industry, the regulators who audit and establish guardrails for new technology, and educators, entrepreneurs and innovators from outside the industry who inspire different thinking. 

2021 members include:

The CFPB recently published a new report, “Disputes on Consumer Credit Reports.”  Using
data on auto loan, student loan, general purpose credit card, and retail card
accounts opened between 2012 and 2019, the report looks at the demographic
characteristics of disputers and the outcomes for accounts with dispute
flags.  The report is yet another signal of a likely CFPB focus on
potential violations of anti-discrimination laws not only by servicers of
mortgage loans, but also by servicers of all types of consumer credit accounts.

The report’s key findings are:

• Consumers who had one or more account opened between 2012 and 2019 and had a dispute flag on at least one account of a given type of credit (“disputers”) were generally younger than consumers who had an account opened between 2012 and 2019 but had no dispute flags (“non-disputers”).  The one exception to this pattern is for student loans, with student loan disputers more likely to be in the 30 to 44 age group than the 18 to 29 age group.  The likely explanation offered by the CFPB is that consumers with a student loan opened in their 30’s are more likely to have refinanced or consolidated a loan and such loans may be more likely to have reporting issues that lead to disputes.

• For all four types of credit, disputers were much more likely than non-disputers to have low credit scores when the disputed account was opened.  The CFPB offers several possible explanations.  One is that consumers with deep subprime and subprime credit scores are more likely to experience errors.  Another is that such consumers are more likely to check their credit reports more frequently than consumers with higher credit scores because they are more likely to have a credit application denied and thus also more likely to take advantage of the right to obtain a free credit report disclosed in an adverse action notice.

• Dispute flags were significantly more common from consumers residing in majority Black census tracts compared to consumers residing in majority White census tracts.  The CFPB suggests that the disparity in dispute flags rates by census tract race in part reflects the patterns in credit scores

• After a dispute flag first appears, outcomes vary substantially across different types of credit.  For example, a substantial share of auto loans with dispute flags is ultimately closed, a large share of student loans with disputed flags is ultimately deleted, and a large share of general purpose credit cards has the dispute flag removed with the account remaining open.  Retail cards are significantly less likely to remain open with the dispute flag removed compared to general purpose credit cards and instead are more likely to be closed or deleted

The CFPB concludes the report by commenting
that an important subject for further research is whether the patterns observed
in the report are driven by differences across groups and credit types in the
type or frequency of the underlying issues that result in a dispute flag or
whether they are driven by furnishers’ practices for reporting dispute flags or
responding to disputes.

 

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Nationwide Credit
Corporation (NCC), an accounts receivable management firm based in Alexandria, VA,
recently made a generous donation of canned foods and dry goods to support the
annual Stuff the Bus food drive in Fairfax County, VA. The food collected will
go toward helping to restock food pantries during and after the holiday season,
as shortages are typically encountered following the holidays each year. This
is an initiative local to NCC’s community and a tangible need, so the team was
eager to get involved and give back. 

“This
is a wonderful annual opportunity to help our neighbors in need. The Stuff the
Bus program is well organized by the county and local nonprofits, so we’re
thankful for what they do to help food pantries receive important assistance.
It’s a pleasure to be able to get involved and stop by the fire department
where the bus is parked to thank the firefighters for their service and deliver
contributions. We had a great time!” shared Phil Rosenthal, President at Nationwide Credit Corp. 

Partners in Change

Nationwide
Credit Corporation has a strong history of partnering
with nonprofit organizations focused on assisting low-income communities with
essential needs and housing. Mr. Rosenthal serves on the A. Heath
Onthank Award Selection Committee for Fairfax County,
a committee focused on advancing and improving public service in the county. He
is also an Appointed Member of the Community Action Advisory Board for Fairfax County, a group dedicated to driving
meaningful change in the community for low-income persons. 

NCC
has deep roots in its community and was originally founded in 1967. Its
leadership believes in corporate social responsibility and staying connected in
the local area. The business has been heavily involved with New Hope Housing, an organization dedicated to ending homelessness and
providing shelter and other services for individuals and families facing
homelessness. They are also official corporate sponsors of FireFighters and
Friends to the Rescue, Food for Others, Elizabeth Dole Foundation, VA hospital
Foundation Galen Society, Bethany House, Second Story, Save The Children, and
Pentagon Federal Credit Union Foundation.

 

Stuff the Bus began in
2011 in response to a critical need to help restock the shelves of local food
pantries after the holidays. This collaborative program is a partnership
between the Fairfax County Government of Fairfax, VA, and local nonprofits. Now
in its 10th year, Stuff the Bus continues to support food assistance efforts
for families and households. Since its inception, Stuff the Bus has collected
over 220 tons of food to feed hungry people in Fairfax County.

About Nationwide Credit Corp

Nationwide Credit Corporation (NCC) is a professional
accounts receivable firm founded in 1967. NCC maintains the highest standards
of quality to provide trusted and proven collection services throughout the
government, utility, health care, and credit union sectors. Today, NCC is proud
of the relationships that they have developed through their devotion to
delivering services and results that are second to none. The company is
headquartered in Alexandria, VA.

In this episode of Executive Q&A, Erin Kerr interviews Sameer Maini about his new venture, Collaborationroom.ai, and how he’s seeking to change the way call center agents work from home. Watch Erin’s conversation with Sameer, or read it below.

Erin:

Hi everyone. I’m here today with Sameer Maini, the founder of Collaborationroom.AI. And we’re going to have a conversation today about how his product has changed the marketplace a little bit, especially when it comes to work from home. So, Sameer, thank you so much for being with me today.

Sameer:

Thank you. And happy to be here and talk about Collaborationroom.AI.

Erin:

Yeah, I’m really excited to hear more about it. So to that end, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your company?

Sameer:

Absolutely. So, as you said there I’m the founder of Collaborationroom.AI. I’ve been in the BPO contact centers space for about 20 years. And, right now I’m based out of Seattle. A little bit more about the product, Collaborationroom.ai is a patent pending application product built for agent engagement, agent productivity, and compliance. And it’s specifically for contact centers, BPOs, and collection agencies. It’s basically built to enable the supervisor to manage a team as if they were in a brick and mortar facility. When COVID hit, everybody started working from home. So I felt there was a challenge and, you know, I’ve always worked in an office or where there has been a call center supervisor next to me, or I’ve always sat in one of those areas. And I’ve always felt the relationship that a supervisor has with the agent is pretty unique, how they’re interacting, you know, whether it’s looking on an account or getting help or working as a part of a team. And to me, working from home seemed like a challenge when you have agents not there and you can’t engage with them the same way you were. So we decided to build this product and here we are.

Erin:

Yeah. That’s great. And, like you mentioned, most people prior to March of 2020, weren’t working from home and it certainly wasn’t typical to have call center agents working from home. So there have been other products that have popped up since then, because things have changed a lot, obviously. There have been a lot of innovations to help support and train agents that are working from home. So what differentiates Collaborationroom.ai from the other solutions out there?

Sameer:

Great, great question. And so a Collaborationroom.ai is basically a purpose-built solution for contact centers and unlike other tools that are out there. It’s not a video conferencing solution. Yes, there are aspects of video. There are aspects of compliance. As a supervisor, you get to see your agent screen and video in real time. Um, if it’s alright with you, I’d like to share a screen over here and that illustrates what differentiates us from competition, or from other other tools that are out there. So this is me as a supervisor. If this is a team and I’m working with my team, our tool allows a supervisor to basically see if the agent has both screens. For example, [name] is using dual monitors. I get to see a screen one screen two, and as video in real time, same case we have, [name] has two monitors, is sharing a screen.

Not only that, there’s a compliance aspect. I see somebody else also in the image and I get a notification as a supervisor that hey, somebody else is also there, who should not be watching the PII information. So it makes us very unique. Unlike other tools where, you know, you’re basically looking at everybody’s video and watching a presenter, this is a purpose-built tool that provides real time and theoretical feedback on agent engagement, as well as agent enabled compliance. And the results that we are seeing is that agent productivity is high with this tool.

Erin:

Great. Well, thank you for sharing that with me and I can see why that would be really important in an environment where normally your supervisor, it might be like three or four cubicles away from you in this case, they could be, you know, across the state or across the country, even at the rate, things are going. So that’s great. And it seems like that is really the piece that differentiates you guys from like a zoom or teams or Google meets or something like that. Is that right?

Sameer:

Yeah. And then, you know, we also have added features, like a one-on-one coaching thing. So while I’m managing my team, if an agent wants to engage in a one-on-one call with me, just like if you’re in the call center, right. The agent raises his hand, the supervisor walks over, looks at a screen and says, okay, Erin, I see what you’re doing. You know, click here, or this is what you need to do on that account. That is another feature that we have, which other products don’t have. So we’re basically building this product for contact centers, BPOs and collection agencies. This is basically, you know, purposeful product to replicate the workflow that you had while you were in a brick and mortar facility.

Erin:

It seems pretty cool. And you had mentioned when you were showing us the screenshot that there’s sort of built in, controls around privacy. So if somebody walks up behind me right now, and you were my supervisor, you’d get a notification that, hey, someone’s looking over Erin’s shoulder.  There are obviously privacy concerns when agents are working from home, both with protecting consumer information and agents’ home privacy, right? Like I might not want you to see my refrigerator or something like that. So how does your solution approach those types of privacy concerns? 

Sameer:

Yeah. Great question. So for agent privacy, you know, we have enabled background blurring. So an agent, if they decide and, you know, in the screenshot, like who had his background blurred. So if somebody walked behind him, I’ll see that somebody is behind them, but I wouldn’t be able to see what kind of refrigerator he had. So there’s background blurring that we have enabled as a part of the roadmap. We’re also doing custom backgrounds. So those things are there that we are building. Background blurring is in production right now, and agents are using it so they can blur the background. So it’s, you know, nobody can see your couch, your refrigerator, or what’s in the background.

Erin:

Yeah. And the reason I said refrigerator out of all things is maybe some people hang their bills on the refrigerator. Like ,I don’t want them to see my dental bill or something like that.

Sameer:

Those things are there.  Background blurring is obviously there, right? The other thing is we’re not recording video or screen. This is a real-time tool. It’s just like your supervisor is there and you’re interacting with him as if you were working in the call center. Right. So we’re not recording all your activities. This is not big brother at all. This is agent engagement for us, very unique for us.  It’s not like somebody can go back and say, okay  let me go and look at what Erin was doing at that point in time. Yes, we have metadata, but it’s not like we’re recording all your video and audio screens to address some of the privacy concerns that you mentioned.

Erin:

Right. That’s great. Along those same lines, if I was an agent working from home, I might feel like that’s a little bit of an encroachment on my privacy, even though if I’m in the office, obviously there are cameras and supervisors. So how have agents responded to your solution so far? 

Sameer:

Great question. That was one of the concerns I had when we built the product, how will agents take having a camera, being where they work. And the response has been very positive. Part of it is the generation that we have right now, right. Who would have thought if you asked me 20 years ago that I’m going to make videos of myself doing something silly, putting them on the internet, and it’s going to be a big corporation. Tik-Tok probably wouldn’t want to talk about that. Right. But people have become more comfortable with video.  I’ve, even when my gray hair is feeling, more open to turning the camera on and having the dog come in and you know, what have you, so agents are liking that.

Plus the other thing is when you’re working from home and you’re a call center agent, and this is why this is an agent engagement tool, and not a big brother monitoring tool. You don’t want to be on an island, just taking phone calls. You want to feel as if you’re a part of our team. So you’re getting to interact with your supervisor on a one-on-one basis. Right. You’re seeing them. It’s not like somebody is basically monitoring everything that’s going on in your house. This is you working with your supervisor, establishing that one-on-one rapport and building the team environment.

Erin:

And that’s so important, especially in a job like being a call center agent, where it can be really, really demanding and can be a little bit taxing. So that’s awesome. It’s great that they’re having a good experience so far. You you talked a little bit about this when we were talking about the agent privacy, but what else is on your roadmap?

Sameer:

Our philosophy is, if you may say, that we’re going to build the roadmap with our customers. Our customers are telling us features and they’re telling us what they would like to see. So a couple of things that are on our immediate roadmap are what we call the buddy system. So you have a senior agent and you have somebody who’s a new hire, and we’re going to build what we call a buddy system where a supervisor can pair a new hire with a senior agent and the agent can work with a supervisor, just like you were in a call center, right? The new hire comes in, sits behind a senior agent, maybe has a voice splitter going on where he’s listening into the call and also seeing what the agent is doing.

So we’re building that out. We’re also building out right now, a supervisor collaboration room and another hierarchy level where a manager will also be able to interact with a supervisor without having to go from one room to another. So we’re building some of that out from a tech perspective. Obviously, you know, it’s AI, it’s obviously continuous evolution of the models and continuously making them better. We’re enabling object detection with the ability to detect cell phones, which is in beta right now. But there are other things that our customers have said that they would like to see that we are adding to the product. Again, you know, we’re getting all this metadata, which I think is very useful. So we measure agent engagement. How does it translate into production?

So building our APIs that allow the customer to extract this agent engagement data and marry it with their collection platform, CRM platform, to see what the relationship is. Can you predict that Erin is a happy agent and they’ll be there with you longer. Sameer was not engaged, maybe a little disgruntled. And can you predict attrition? Can you predict production? So we’re building those APIs out to give our customers the ability to take this data and marry it with the production data, with their CRM data, and drive their business using the data that we’re getting. So those are the things on the roadmap for us.

Erin:

Wow. So it sounds like it’s really sort of an all-in-one agent training tool and it, you know, in the future it could really alleviate or stop companies from having to pull agents in at all. People can work from anywhere.

Sameer:

Yeah. I think that’s the vision that we have is we feel work from home is here to stay. We feel you know, the industry has changed. We feel people are getting used to it. I personally work from home now and I haven’t been in an office in two years. So I think, it’s basically enabling the supervisors to engage with their teams, allowing businesses to recruit anywhere. Right. I remember in the BPO space, if you had to open a call center, you would do a big survey, figure out where real estate is cheap, where you can go hire people, where the talent is available. And you have to put in a big infrastructure before you could even make one new hire.You’ve got to build a call center, port facilities, all that stuff, circuits. I think the world has become flat. Now, if you may say, and allowing businesses to basically recruit, hire, and, you know, in areas where they don’t have offices. So that’s the vision we have of enabling the business to do so.

Erin:

That’s great. Those are really all the questions I have for you today about Collaborationroom.ai. Do you have any final thoughts?

Sameer:

Well, we’re excited for this journey. We are a young company. You know, we’re excited to partner with our clients and we’re excited to build this product and enable them to go back and do what they were doing pre-COVID but do it while agents are working from home. So thank you.

Erin:

Thank you so much for having this conversation with me today, Sameer. It’s been great to learn more about Collaborationroom.ai, which is a very unique product and not one that I’ve heard of before. Like  you said, it’s patent pending. So that’s amazing. Thanks again for joining us today. And I’m sure I will talk to you soon.

Sameer:

Thank you

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RESTON, Va. —  MRS
BPO LLC, a leading provider of services to the accounts receivables
management industry, has adopted Neustar
Inc. contact intelligence solutions to improve its omnichannel
outreach strategy – increasing right-party contact rates, reducing operational
costs and maintaining compliance in the forthcoming CFPB
Regulation F environment.

 

Neustar Phone
Behavior Intelligence delivers the best time of day and day of
the week to call each consumer, based on when they are most likely to answer,
as well as the best phone number to use when reaching out to each individual.
Neustar also verifies correct email addresses and offers insights into the most
active address for each contact, allowing MRS BPO to quickly prioritize the
best email address to complement their phone outreach efforts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new Regulation F
stipulates that a collector may not place more than seven calls within seven
consecutive days to a single consumer or call a consumer more than once within
a seven-day period after communicating with that individual; however,
collectors may still send consumers SMS and email messages. Communication via
digital channels (when consent is provided) can enable more efficient
interactions, particularly with younger consumers who prefer digital outreach.

“By limiting the number of calls a debt collector may place to a
given individual, the CFPB’s Regulation F increases the value of every contact
attempt and encourages collectors to prioritize accuracy,” said Robert McKay,
senior vice president and general manager of Risk Solutions at Neustar. “This
emphasis on quality over quantity is leading forward-thinking collectors like
MRS to embrace data-driven omnichannel contact strategies. Operationalizing
digital channels to complement the phone channel enables collectors to increase
the efficiency and effectiveness of their outbound communications while also
reducing compliance and financial risks.”

“Consumer information is continually changing, so outreach files
often contain multiple email addresses and phone numbers collected over time.
Knowing an individual’s primary or preferred number and email, and when they
are more likely to be engaged, makes a significant difference in the contact
rate,” said Jim Beck, COO at MRS. “Neustar intelligence solutions will help us
assess and improve the quality of our current consumer contact information,
allowing us to anticipate challenges, implement a more successful omnichannel
communication strategy and increase right-party contact rates while remaining
compliant with regulations.”

MRS immediately saw that 8% of the numbers they were dialing
were dials with a low probability of contacting a customer. Redirecting those
efforts to higher score phone numbers lead to a contact rate increase of 15% in
the first month.

Neustar outbound solutions are part of the TRUSTID Contact Center
Solutions suite. These solutions are powered by the Neustar
OneID identity resolution platform, which gives businesses a single
holistic, connected view of their customers across all communication channels,
both online and offline. OneID continuously corroborates, validates and appends
missing information across customer records, enabling organizations to more
easily reach their customers via the right channel at the right time.

 

For more information about Neustar contact intelligence
solutions for the collections industry, visit https://www.discover.neustar/prepare-for-fewer-collectors-and-more-accounts-contact-request.html.

 

About MRS BPO

MRS BPO LLC is a full-service accounts receivable management
firm that offers pre-chargeoff collection and post-chargeoff recoveries
services to a variety of industries. Founded in 1991, it has grown from a
small New Jersey-based agency to a large market provider with facilities
in New Jersey, Ohio and Alabama, servicing over 60 clients in the
financial services, automotive, marketplace lending, telecommunications, cable
and municipal sectors. MRS has been recognized by many of its Fortune 50
clients for its commitment to compliance, quality and best-in-class technology
solutions. For more information, visit https://www.mrsbpo.com.

 

About Neustar

Neustar is an information services and technology company and a
leader in identity resolution providing the data and technology that enable
trusted connections between companies and people at the moments that matter
most. Neustar offers industry-leading solutions in marketing, risk,
communications and security that responsibly connect data on people, devices
and locations, continuously corroborated through billions of transactions.
Neustar serves more than 8,000 clients worldwide, including 60 of the Fortune
100. Learn how your company can benefit from the power of trusted connections
here: home.neustar.

On October 29, 2021, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a press release naming Lorelei Salas as Assistant Director for the Office of Supervision Policy and Eric Halperin as Assistant Director for the Office of Enforcement.

“Lorelei Salas and Eric Halperin are both distinguished public servants with deep expertise in consumer protection,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “Together, they will be effective watchdogs over the financial marketplace, especially when it comes to stopping repeat offenders.”

Lorelei Salas will be joining the CFPB as Assistant Director for Supervision Policy and will also serve as the Acting Assistant Director for Supervision Examinations. From 2016 to 2021, Ms. Salas served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, overseeing hundreds of inspectors, attorneys, and other professionals to protect city residents. Under her leadership, the agency aggressively pursued corporations that employed unlawful, predatory practices to target low-income and immigrant consumers. Previously, Ms. Salas was the legal director at Make the Road New York, supervising immigration, housing, and employment legal services programs designed to increase access to justice for immigrants and refugees. She also led the legal department at Catholic Migration Services, supervising the same areas of legal practice. In 2009, Ms. Salas was nominated by President Obama as the Wage and Hour Administrator at the United States Department of Labor. Ms. Salas also worked at the New York State Attorney General’s Office in the Litigation and Labor Bureaus and held multiple senior management positions at the New York State Department of Labor. Ms. Salas is also the recipient of Open Society Foundations’ Leadership in Government fellowship and has served as a Fulbright Specialist with expertise in U.S. consumer and worker protection laws. Prior to her legal career, Ms. Salas worked as a private sector auditor investigating companies’ compliance with their own codes of conduct and with federal and state workplace laws. Ms. Salas earned an A.A. from La Guardia Community College, a B.A. from Hunter College, and a J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.

Eric Halperin has joined the CFPB as Assistant Director for the Office of Enforcement. Mr. Halperin has served in a number of positions in the non-profit and government sectors. Most recently, Mr. Halperin was CEO of Civil Rights Corps. From 2010 to 2014, Mr. Halperin served in leadership roles in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, first as Special Counsel for Fair Lending and later as Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Division’s fair housing, fair lending, and employment enforcement programs. While in those roles, he received the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award, the Department’s highest award for excellence in legal performance, and the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award. He also served as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division from 1998 to 2004. Mr. Halperin has also worked as a senior advisor to Open Society Foundations’ U.S. Program and as the Director of the Center for Responsible Lending’s Litigation Program and its Washington office. Mr. Halperin received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Its odd to think I’ve been talking about this
for nearly three years.

On December 12, 2018
the FCC first announced the creation of the reassigned number database. The
results of years of advocacy by industry participants who advised the FCC they
were being held strictly liable under the TCPA for efforts to contact their
customers after phone numbers had changed hands without their knowledge, the
database helps to assure that good actors in the ecosystem can safely detect
phone numbers that may no longer be valid.

Here’s a little
background.

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The Problem

Over 30 million cell
phone numbers change hands each year. And the new recipients of those numbers
don’t want phone calls intended for the former owners of those phones. Until
November 1, 2021, however, there was no definitive way for businesses to know whether
their customers’ numbers had changed hands.

Moreover, the TCPA is
considered a strict liability statute by many courts. So if a caller attempted
to reach their customer on a cell phone number that had changed hands, they
could be sued for $500.00 per call—even though the business might have no idea
the number no longer belonged to their customer.

The Solution

A database that tracks
all cell phone reassignments in the United States. The FCC has required
carriers to provide updated information regarding cell phone numbers and their
ownership for nearly three years now. Owing to privacy concerns, however, the
database is extremely limited in terms of the data that is shared.

Containing only cell
phone number and reassignment dates, the database should prove extremely
effective at identifying reassigned numbers—but it will not assist callers
attempting to avoid wrong numbers, or attempting to confirm that the number
they have was properly provided by a consumer.

How it Works

A user of the
database—which has been in a beta test since July of this year—will submit two
pieces of information: a cell phone number and a “last good” date. The Database
Administrator will respond with either a “yes” or a “no.” The “yes” means that a
number has been reassigned since the last good date and cannot be called. A
“no” means that the number has not been reassigned and is presumptively ok to
call.

A “last good” date is
the last date that the caller is comfortable the phone number belonged to the
called party—generally an “RPC” (right party contact) date.

As I have been saying
for years now, therefore, it is critical that all callers who wish to take
advantage of the database—and that should be everybody—track last good dates
for their entire cell phone database.

The Safeharbor

For folks that make
use of the reassigned number database there is a very big upside: The FCC has
issued a safe harbor shielding such callers from liability in the event that
the database is inaccurate. So if a caller properly sets up a protocol for
scrubbing against the database, the caller should be completely protected
against TCPA liability calls to reassigned numbers— a very important protection
to have.

There are some
limitations here, however:

1.   The safeharbor only protects
callers against errors in the database –errors in identifying
data to transmit, errors in last good date identification, and errors in
operationalizing database results are all outside the scope of the safeharbor.
So if you mess up on implementing the database you will have done yourself more
harm than good;

2.   Again, the database
does not protect against all wrong number calls—it is not designed to detect
dissimilarities between the “called party” and the subscriber to a cell phone
service, for instance. So callers will need to remain on guard against wrong
number calls using other best practices—such as double form fills, multi-factor
authentication, vendor solutions, etc.

3.   Most importantly, the
safeharbor does not protect you if you do not use the database, obviously, and
businesses electing not to use the database may be more likely to be found to
have “willfully” violated the statute—although I don’t think that results
necessarily follows.

In any event, its a
big day TCPA.World. Be sure to take advantage of the database to the fullest
extent you can.

If you have questions,
we’re always here to help.

The database can be
found here: http://www.reassigned.us/