Collections & Credit Risk articles from September 2008

Collections & Credit Risk archives from September 2008

Leading Opportunities.(Editorial)
September 1, 2008... This month, please indulge me while I begin with a shameless plug one that I wouldnt make if I didnt believe you could benefit by paying attention to it. Here goes: The Financial Services Collections Conference is set for Oct. 22-24 in Las...

Q. What challenges has your agency or company faced given the state of the economy? What do you expect through the rest of 2008? In the next 12 months?
September 1, 2008... Back about six weeks ago the building we were located in was burned down. Although that has been a major issue in our lives right now, we have persevered. This past year has been like a roller coaster up one month, down the next. We are pretty...

Prices for Credit Card Charge-offs Experiencing a Market Correction.
September 1, 2008... Credit card debt prices are down since the start of 2008, according to industry experts, but a gap still exists between prices and the debts worth. They are trending down but they have not yet reached the value point in our opinion, says...

Results Stir Strong Reactions.
September 1, 2008... Market conditions are bleak. Charge-offs are soaring. Consumers are on the edge of panic. Welcome to the banking sector, circa 2008, where the industry continued to break records for futility in the second quarter ended June 30. ...

Industry News.(Ontario Systems LLC has appointed Tony Reisz)(Euler and Hermes' contract with Qatar Insurance Company SAQ)(Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc's contract with Broussard Partners and Associates Inc.)(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Portfolio Recovery Associates, a Norfolk, Va.-based buyer of delinquent consumer receivables including credit card accounts, has acquired Broussard Partners & Associates Inc., a Houston-based company that offers audit services to local tax...

After All ... It's a Small World: Offshore experts detail the ins and outs of expanding to another country.
September 1, 2008... Offshoring long ago grew into a popular strategy for companies seeking every possible cost advantage. The easy target: payroll, one of the largest expenses for companies. The fix: tap labor markets with lower costs. Developing countries in...

Offshore Evolution.(Brief article)
September 1, 2008... Taking a call center offshore continues to promise great savings but, with skilled labor at a premium and offshore agents more difficult to find and harder to keep, pricing is not as favorable in 2008. In the beginning, there was a...

Unique Niche: More than a decade ago, Louise Epstein jumped into a second career in a fledgling industry and quickly made her mark.
September 1, 2008... Louise Epstein Began building her company, Charge-Off Clearinghouse, in 1997 with a Web site and a formula for finding portfolios that yield strong results. She found success in a hurry, which conflicted somewhat with the debt-buying...

Online Collections: Ready to Take Off: Agencies tried online collections earlier this decade with little success. Now, efforts to build the Internet as a strong recovery channel are ramping up.
September 1, 2008... After more than four years of working to build the Internet into an effective collections channel, resistance to the technology is starting to ease, according to Mercator Advisory Group Inc. Just 5% of delinquencies are recovered online,...

Lessons Learned: As the student loan market starts to recover, collection firms try to gauge the long-term fallout of the recent credit crisis.(Industry overview)
September 1, 2008... Troubles with Student loans first surfaced last winter as private lenders began pulling out of the market and nonprofit loan providers suddenly found themselves unable to raise capital. Nine months later, it is clear that the student loan...

Top Challenges: Dialer Technology: What are the new cost benefits of hosted on-demand outbound technology?
September 1, 2008... Long at the heart of billing and collections, dialer technology today arguably is more a liability than an asset. Despite offering productivity gains for agents, the legacy systems require complex networking and IT support and are costly to...

Riding the Roller Coaster: Tips on Raising Capital.
September 1, 2008... What goes up must come down. Economic cycles are fundamental to free market economies. Whether the subject is oil prices, the housing market, interest rates or prices of charged-off credit card debt, cycles are the only certainty. The most...