Collections & Credit Risk articles from May 2002

Collections & Credit Risk archives from May 2002

COVER PACKAGE: Commercial Credit.
May 1, 2002... Credit Cards 24 B2B Cards Soar Many commercial-card portfolios have crashed and burned at lift off, but now they are skyrocketing. What's fueling the growth? Credit Risk Management 31 Is Portfolio Analysis a Must?...

My Take: 'Outsourced Critical Thinking': Re Enron: Who Should Have Known, When?
May 1, 2002... As credit professionals ponder the implosion of Enron, it is embarrassingly clear that a lot of otherwise intelligent people failed to exercise their full critical capacities regarding Enron. And not only did this failure lead to lost jobs at...

Letters to the Editor.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2002... India's Promise To the Editor: I was surprised that the article "Moving Upstream" (November 2001) did not develop the theme on moving to India with more detail. Today India offers a wealth of opportunity for the credit grantor that is...

Survey Results.(fraud protection)
May 1, 2002... Here's how visitors to Credit & Collections World, Collections & Credit Risk's website, voted on this month's Instant Survey: Creditors, consumers, and credit bureaus are not doing enough to help law enforcement fight fraud, which will...

Snail's Pace for Bankruptcy Bill.
May 1, 2002... Discrepancies between the House and Senate versions of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2001 continue to keep the legislation in limbo, nearly 18 months after President Clinton pocket vetoed the bill days before he left office. At press time, new...

Credit Card Accounts Receivable Metrics.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Net Flow Rates Bucket-to-Bucket Flow Rates Collections Effectiveness & Delinquencies per FTE Efficiency and Collections Intensity Annualized Data Bankruptcy and Credit Losses While two of three primary front-end...

What's New?
May 1, 2002... Good Student, Good Credit Following a new study that shows college students understand the importance of good credit habits but need more guidance, Citibank's Citi Cards unit joins forces with Experian Inc. to offer free credit reports....

Experian to Buy ConsumerInfo.com.(News Briefs)
May 1, 2002... Experian will purchase ConsumerInfo.com from Homestore.com for $130 million. ConsumerInfo.com offers online credit reports and scores to consumers. About 75% of revenue comes from subscriptions. For $79.95 yearly, members can get their credit...

Banking on Integration: Financial services firms gain by integrating their information systems - internally and with their partners.
May 1, 2002... Many financial organizations face a common challenge in today's business world - the need to blend several information systems representing various islands of information. Firms involved in a merger or acquisition have the added task of...

'We Have Lift Off!': B2B Cards Soar.
May 1, 2002... Many attempts to launch commercial card portfolios have crashed and burned, but now small-businesses alone are expected to double their use to $112 billion in receivables by 2004. What's fueling the skyrocketing growth? The U.S. business...

The Top 10 Largest Bank-Issued Commercial Card Programs.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Bank 1 U.S. Bancorp 2 Citigroup Inc. 3 Bank of America 4 Bank One/First USA Bank 5 GE Capital Consumer Card 6 MBNA America* 7 Wells Fargo Bank 8 The Chase Manhattan Corp. 9 First National Bank of Omaha 10...

Portfolio Analysis:A Must-Have Strategic Planning Tool?: Regularly evaluating the company's entire accounts receivable portfolio can help steer it onto a more profitable course.
May 1, 2002... To manage the credit process, today's credit executive must move beyond traditional customer analysis to analysis of the entire receivables portfolio. Many firms still focus on the number of customers they serve without giving sufficient...

Internet Telephony Calling: IP technology is rewarding companies that made early investments. Now second- and third-generation systems that support multimedia contact centers look even more promising.
May 1, 2002... Talk about growing pains. Victoria, B.C.-based Accounts Recovery Corp. had plenty in the past few years. The 250-employee Canadian agency expanded to three more provinces, forcing managers to constantly meet via conference calls, using an...

Beyond Bad Debt.
May 1, 2002... Lenders are tapping the secondary whole-loan sales market to manage a new generation of credit strategies. Why? And is a flood of performing loan sales on the way? This is the first in a two-part series on new trends in the debt sales...

Divesting an 'Orphan' Portfolio.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... With the acquisition of a mid-sized bank, a super regional bank inherited a mixed portfolio of approximately $75 million of secured consumer loans, primarily consisting of indirect auto, marine, RV, and manufactured housing loans. The...

Credit Insurance: A Corporate Security Blanket: In shaky economic times, companies look to insurers to give them protection and minimize their credit risk so top executives can sleep at night.
May 1, 2002... There's been a lot of justified hand wringing about the economic fallout from a slew of negative events this past year - ranging from the September 11 terrorists attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., nearly eight months ago, to the collapse...

Credit Scoring Applications & Services (Partial List).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Company AIG Chubb Trade Credit CNA Credit Coface North America Euler ACI Gerling NCM Credit and Finance AG Location New York Warren, N.J. Chicago New York Baltimore Baltimore ...

Dodging Bankruptcy Bullets: After a lull, both consumer and commercial bankruptcy filings in the U.S. have returned to record highs. How many shots can your portfolio take?(Brief Article)
May 1, 2002... Reports from the American Bankruptcy Institute, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and the Federal Reserve indicate that household debt is at a record high relative to disposable income and that consumer bankruptcy filings once more...

Accounting: Not Its First Crisis: In the wake of the Enron-Arthur Andersen disaster, accounting's near-terminal crisis is the buzz. Regardless of the causes of this crisis, accounting will change.
May 1, 2002... Today's accounting crisis could be the most important evolution in quantitative bookkeeping methods since the Middle Ages. During the late Middle Ages, Italian merchants and bankers adopted Indian numerals and the place-value notation system -...