Debt & Collections
Optimization is a very broad and commonly used term today and the exact interpretation is typically driven by one's industry experience and exposure to modern analytical tools. Webster defines optimize as: "to make as perfect, effective or functional as possible". In the risk/collections world, when we want to optimize our strategies as perfect as technology will allow us, we need to turn to advanced mathematical engineering. More than just scoring and behavioral trending, the most powerful optimization tools leverage all available data and consider business constraints in addition to behavioral propensities for collections efficiency and collections management. A good example of how this can be leveraged in collections is with letter strategies. The cost of mailing letters is often a significant portion of the collections operational budget. After the initial letter required by the Fair Debt Collection Practice Act (FDCPA) has been sent, the question immediately becomes: “What is the best use of lettering dollars to maximize return?” With optimization technology we can leverage historical response data while also considering factors such as the cost of each letter, performance of each letter variation and departmental budget constraints, while weighing the alternatives to determine the best possible action to take for each individual customer. n short, cutting edge mathematical optimization technology answers the question: "Where is the point of diminishing return between collections treatment effectiveness and efficiency / cost?"
Currently, financial institutions focus on the existing customer base and prioritize collections to recover more cash, and do it faster. There is also a need to invest in strategic projects with limited budgets in order to generate benefits in a very short term, to rationalize existing strategies and processes while ensuring that optimal decisions are made at each client contact point. To meet the present challenging conditions, financial institutions increasingly are performing business reviews with the goal of evaluating needs and opportunities to maximize the value created in their portfolios. Business reviews assess an organization’s capacity to leverage on existing opportunities as well as identifying any additional capability that might be necessary to realize the increased benefits. An effective business review covers the following four phases: Problem definition: Establish and qualify what the key objectives of the organization are, the most relevant issues to address, the constraints of the solution, the criteria for success and to summarize how value management fits into the company’s corporate and business unit strategies. Benchmark against leading practice: Strategies, processes, tools, knowledge, and people have to be measured using a review toolset tailored to the organization’s strategic objectives. Define the opportunities and create the roadmap: The elements required to implement the opportunities and migrating to the best practice should be scheduled in a phased strategic roadmap that includes the implementation plan of the proposed actions. Achieve the benefits: An ROI-focused approach, founded on experience in peer organizations, will allow analysis of the cost-benefits of the recommended investments and quantify the potential savings and additional revenue generated. A continuous fine-tuning (i.e. impact of market changes, looking for the next competitive edge and proactively challenge solution boundaries) will ensure the benefits are fully achieved. Today’s blog is an extract of an article written by Burak Kilicoglu, an Experian Global Consultant To read the entire article in the April edition of Experian Decision Analytics’ global newsletter e-news, please follow the link below: http://www.experian-da.com/news/enews_0903/Story2.html
2007 and 2008 saw a rapid change of consumer behaviors and it is no surprise to most collections professionals that the existing collections scoring models and strategies are not working as well as they used to. These tools and collections workflow practices were mostly built from historical behavioral and credit data and assume that consumers will continue to behave as they had in the past. We all know that this is not the case, with an example being prioritization of debt and repayment patterns. Its been assumed and validated for decades that consumers will let their credit card lines go before an auto loan and that the mortgage obligations would be the last trade to remain standing before bankruptcy. Today, that is certainly not the case and there are other significant behavior shifts that are contributing to today's weak business models. There are at least three compelling reasons to believe now is the right time for updates: It appears that most of the consumer behavioral shift is over for collections. While economic recovery will take many years, more radical changes in the economy are unlikely. Most experts are calling for a housing bottom sometime in 2009 and there are already signs of hope on Wall Street. What is built now shouldn't be obsolete next year. A slow economic recovery probably means that the life of new models will be fairly long and most consumers won't be able to improve their credit and collections scores anytime soon. Even after financial recovery (which at this point is not likely over the short term for many that are already in trouble), it can take two to seven years of responsible payment history before a risk assessment is improved. We now have the data with which to make the updates. It takes six to12 months of stability to accumulate sufficient data for proper analysis and so far 2009 hasn't seen much behavioral volatility. Whether you build or buy, the process takes awhile, so if you still need a few more months of history in will be in hand when needed if the projects are kicked off soon.
Our current collections management landscape is seeing unprecedented consumer debt burdens: Total consumer debt o/s is at $14 trillion as of Jan ’09 Revolving debt o/s has reached $1 trillion The unemployment rate is at 7.6% and is expected to continue to rise Credit card and Home Equity Line Of Credit issuers reduced available credit by approximately $2 Trillion last year and more reductions are expected in 2009 There is a continuing rise in delinquencies and chargeoffs. Here are some examples from our recent research: 8.5% of Prime Adjustable Rate Mortgages are now delinquent which shows an increase of 491% over this time last year 25% of all sub prime mortgages are now 60+ days delinquent Delinquencies for prime bankcard customers have increased 286% over the last 2 years 34% of all scoreable consumers (those who have sufficient trade information to calculate a score) now have a collection account. Compound these by a decline in the relative collectability of these accounts and you see: 9 million households now have negative equity 20% of 401(k) accounts have been tapped for loans (usually at a cost of 45% in penalties and fees to the account holder) According to the Federal Reserve, in late 2006 – at the height of the sub prime mortgage boom - the U.S. experienced a negative savings rate for the first time since the Great Depression.
Understanding the Champion/Challenger testing strategy As the economic world continues to change, collection strategy testing becomes increasingly important. Champion/Challenger strategy testing is performed using a sample segment and the results provide a learning tool for determining which collections strategies are most effective. This allows strategies to be tested before rolling them out across the entire portfolio. The purpose of this experimental element to collections strategy management is to observe the effectiveness of new strategies, support continuous improvement of collection approaches and facilitate adaptability to changes in consumer behavior. The methodology behind testing is simple. First, the current environment should be assessed to identify specific areas for potential improvement. Then, a test plan is designed. The test plan should, at a minimum, include well-defined objectives and goals, proposed strategy design, determination of sample size, operational considerations, execution approach, success criteria, and evaluation timetable. After the framework for the test plan has been outlined, running “what if” scenarios will improve refinement of the collections strategy. In the next phase, implementation occurs following the directives of the test plan. Evaluating strategies commences after implementation and continues throughout the duration of the test. This includes analyzing metrics established during the test plan phase to identify trends and changes as a result of the new challenger strategy. The challenger strategy is declared the new champion if the test achieves or exceeds expectations. However, before proceeding with the new champion strategy over the entire portfolio, carefully consider any operational constraints that might hinder the success of the strategy on a grand scale. Once these operational constraints have been identified and their impact assessed, the new champion strategy should be executed.
In addition to behavioral models, collections management and account management groups need the ability to implement strategies in order to effectively handle and process accounts, particularly when the optimization of resources is a priority. While the behavioral models will effectively evaluate and measure the likelihood that an account will become delinquent or result in a loss, strategies are the specific actions taken, based on the score prediction, as well as other key information that is available when those actions are appropriate. Identifying high-risk accounts, for example, may result in collections strategies designed to accelerate collections activity and execute more aggressive actions and increase collections efficiency. On the other hand, identifying low-risk accounts can help determine when to take advantage of cost-saving actions and focus on customer retention programs. Effective strategies also address how to handle accounts that fall between the high- and low-risk extremes, as well as accounts that fall into special categories such as first-payment defaults, recently delinquent accounts and unique customer or product segments. To accommodate lenders with systems that cannot support either behavioral scorecards or automated strategy assignments a hosted collections software decisioning system can close the gap. To use these services master file data needs to be transmitted (securely) on a regular basis. The remote decision engine then calculates behavioral scores, identifies special handling accounts and electronically delivers the recommended strategy code or string of actions to drive treatments.
Have you ever wondered how your current collections workflow process evolved to its current state? To start at the beginning, let’s rewind to medieval England … The Tallyman The earliest known collections system was essentially a door-to-door program, as there were no modern day devices to make the process more efficient. The system of record at that time was typically a hardwood stick with carved notches representing loans and payments between a lender and borrower. This door-to-door collector was known as the Tallyman, which referred to the collection of tally sticks he carried to document financial transactions. The beginning of modern times As technology evolved, telephones and letters became the collections management tools of choice, with a personal visit being a last resort action. The process where a collector managed the repayment strategy and relationships for his assigned customers was still in practice. Collections operations were typically in decentralized branches and small teams of skilled collectors were able to effectively manage this “cradle-to-grave” approach. Yesterday When expense management became a priority, the migration to larger, centralized operations became an industry trend. Many companies found it difficult to hire large teams of highly-skilled collectors in their geographic regions and the bucket system was born. The concept was simple and effective -- let the less experienced staff work the accounts that are the easiest to collect and focus the experienced collectors on the more difficult cases. Advanced collections tools such as automatic dialers arrived on the market to increase efficiency and were shortly followed by decision engines used to support behavioral scoring and segmentation strategies. Today Current trends in collections include the migration towards a risk-based segmentation and strategy approach. Cutting edge tools and collection management software, designed to address today’s collections business objectives, are hitting the market and challenging the traditional bucket approach most of us are used to. As the economic conditions of the past few years deteriorated, many organizations began shifting their spending focus towards the collections department and this, in turn, has inspired investment and innovation from software, analytics and data vendors. New collections scores were recently unveiled that yield predictiveness that has never been seen and collections data products have become significantly more sophisticated. Modern technology is also empowering collections managers to control the destiny of their business units by freeing them from the constraints of over-burdened IT departments and inflexible systems. There is also an emerging trend to consider the collective power of multiple products working in tandem. Collections experts are finding that the benefit of the complete solution equals much more than just the sum of the parts. Tomorrow Once we all migrate to the next level and employ today’s modern marvels to make our businesses more productive and efficient, what’s next? It’s highly probable that tomorrow’s collections workflow will consider the entire relationship and profit potential of a customer before a collections action is executed. Additionally, the value in considering the entire credit and risk picture associated with a customer will be better understood and we will learn when each of the holistic view options is most appropriate. There are a number of roadblocks in the way today, including disparate systems and databases and siloed business units with goals and objectives that are not aligned. Will we eventually get there? The business leaders with long-range vision certainly will … just as some unknown visionary had the initiative to embrace emerging technology and abandon his tally sticks. For more information and to read the Decision Analytics newsletter that features one of my previous blogs, "Next generation collections systems", click here.
They have started to shift away from time-based collections management activities (the 30-, 60-, 90-day bucket approach). Instead, the focus is migrating towards the development of collections strategy that is based on the underlying risk of the individual – to look at how he is performing on all of the obligations in the total relationship to determine the likelihood of repayment and the associated activities that can facilitate that repayment. They’ve found they can’t rely purely on traditional models anymore because consumer behavior has dramatically changed and an account only approach doesn’t reflect the true risk and value of the individual’s relationship.
Part 3 Reducing operational and overhead costs starts with the automation of tasks that would otherwise be performed by a human resource. By leveraging an advanced segmentation approach, it is possible to better identify accounts that will not require collector intervention. While automation is not a new concept to collections, significant benefits of modern systems include: • enabling more functions to be automated; • effectiveness of the automated functions to be validated; and • more changes made per year versus legacy systems. Fixing a bad phone number: The old way To illustrate effective automation, let’s use an example where an account is found to have a bad phone number. A common approach to this problem might be for the outbound collector to route the account to a skip specialist who can perform research. This often has the receiving party starting the process after the nightly batch process has transferred the account across departments. If a phone number is found, the account may be manually routed back to an outbound queue and if not, a no-contact letter may be generated. Additionally, there are tasks that need to be performed such as noting accounts that consume a collector’s time. Fixing a bad phone number: The new way A more efficient and cost-effective approach would be for the employee identifying the need for a new number to click a pre-defined button to let the collections system know of the issue. The system could then automatically call out to an external data source to: • collect the new number; • repopulate the appropriate field; • reroute the account back to the most appropriate outbound queue; • log a history of all automated functions performed, and • do all of this within just a few seconds! If the appropriate number cannot be located, the system would know which letter to send and then route the account to the most appropriate holding queue. Reducing operational costs After automation, the operational costs are further reduced by identifying which actions can be effectively replaced by lower-cost options that yield the same results, or even eliminating actions that present no substantial value. For example, why make a call when a letter will suffice? And what happens if we subsequently replace that letter with a text message or take no action at all? Intelligent features of modern systems such as champion/challenger testing can be employed to support a continuous learning process that increases the financial benefits of automation as experience and knowledge is gained. As new automation is introduced and validated as beneficial, other improvement theories can be tested and subsequently abandoned or adopted. Considering the possible impact of automation and action reductions on cost savings let’s assume that three dial attempts are made on the average delinquent account in the first 30 days at a cost of 25 cents each and on the fourth attempt there is a right party contact, which costs an additional $2.50 (assuming the talk time is five minutes). Adding one letter at 75 cents, we have a total cost to collect of $4.00 before the account hits 31 days past due. With 250,000 customers entering collections each month, we can save $200,000 each month in the early stage alone with just a 20 percent improvement. This result could easily be achieved by reducing talk time and eliminating unnecessary actions or unproductive call attempts. Annually that adds up to approximately $2.5 million dollars in savings, in this example. Champion/challenger tests, as well as, the improved functionality of modern systems can also be extended beyond the in-house work stream. Evaluating and comparing external agencies can significantly improve agency performance as well as enable the lender to better manage placement costs. For example, if a lender allocates 1,000 accounts to an external agency each month, with an average balance of $3,000, the total dollars allocated annually is $36 million. If 22 percent of the debt is collected and a 25 percent commission is charged, the net to the lender is nearly $6 million. Improving that return by a mere 4 percent through better allocation strategies, which is a conservative goal, we add another million to the bottom line each year. By factoring in the ability of next generation collections systems to automate most aspects of the placement process itself, including recalling accounts, we further improve efficiencies, free up valuable resources and allow management greater control of the process. Additional benefits of functionally rich modern systems also enable management to grant external resources various levels of remote access to the collections systems to better monitor activities and ensure that transactional data is properly captured. In addition to granting external agencies remote access, modern collections systems can also enable collectors to work from home-based workstations to further reduce operational costs. Many industry analysts see this as an emerging trend over the next few years, particularly when productivity can be monitored in real-time. My next blog will continue the discussion on the benefits of next generation collections systems and will provide details on improved change management processes.
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