Reputable Debt Collection Agencies Screen Collectors

News And Col­lec­tion Agency Regulations

Rep­utable Debt Col­lec­tion Agen­cies Screen Collectors

With the econ­omy suf­fer­ing, many debt col­lec­tion agen­cies are staffing up and hir­ing lots of new col­lec­tors. The hir­ing, train­ing and man­age­ment processes employed by agen­cies will have a dra­matic impact on their abil­ity to be suc­cess­ful for their clients.

There are laws reg­u­lat­ing the hir­ing prac­tices of retail agen­cies (i.e. agen­cies that col­lect from indi­vid­u­als). Debt col­lec­tion agen­cies are required by law to not hire crim­i­nals, and they are required to con­duct back­ground checks for all new hires which must then be sub­mit­ted to state reg­u­la­tors. Rep­utable agen­cies will never know­ingly hire a crim­i­nal or a per­son with a ques­tion­able past. While not reg­u­lated the same as retail agen­cies, com­mer­cial debt col­lec­tion agen­cies that col­lect exclu­sively from busi­nesses, still must be dili­gent in their hir­ing practices.

Back­ground checks of all col­lec­tor appli­cants should be nor­mal oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure at agen­cies. Sen­si­tive finan­cial infor­ma­tion is always part of the col­lec­tion process, espe­cially if there is a per­sonal guar­an­tee attached to a busi­ness’ debt. As part of the back­ground check the agen­cies should call sev­eral of the col­lec­tor applicant’s ref­er­ences. Talk­ing to prior employ­ers often will raise a red flag if any pre­vi­ous prob­lems exist.

Recently, in Min­nesota, six debt col­lec­tion agen­cies came under fire by state reg­u­la­tors for employ­ing crim­i­nals, harass­ing con­sumers and steal­ing their finan­cial infor­ma­tion,
Accord­ing to the reg­u­la­tors, the firms hired a large num­ber of felons who then gained access to finan­cially stressed con­sumers’ credit card and bank account num­bers and other sen­si­tive finan­cial data, Due to the crim­i­nal back­grounds of the agen­cies’ employ­ees, the ques­tion of what these col­lec­tors could poten­tially do with this finan­cial infor­ma­tion is an obvi­ous issue.

Once the back­ground check is com­plete and the new col­lec­tor is hired, rep­utable agen­cies should pro­vide thor­ough train­ing. Each agency has its own par­tic­u­lar col­lec­tion meth­ods and every col­lec­tor within that agency should per­form the col­lec­tion process in a sim­i­lar man­ner in order to pro­vide con­sis­tency for clients. It is impor­tant to not short­cut train­ing. Some agen­cies have very rigid pro­ce­dures, which may not max­i­mize results but are eas­ier to man­age. Other agen­cies use a cus­tom approach to each claim, which can lead to a much higher suc­cess rate but is more dif­fi­cult to manage.

Most agen­cies use soft­ware to help track the col­lec­tion process. Every­one in the agency should be trained on how to input the track­ing data cor­rectly and con­sis­tently. This train­ing will save hours of frus­tra­tion and headaches and is essen­tial to suc­cess­ful man­age­ment of the col­lec­tion process and ulti­mately col­lect­ing the money owed. When every­one inputs data the same way the resul­tant reports and data will be as accu­rate as pos­si­ble. This allows agen­cies to eas­ily pin­point where each col­lec­tion claim stands at a given point in time. Often clients will ask for reports giv­ing them a sta­tus of where their claims are. These reports are per­fect for this pur­pose and the infor­ma­tion pro­vided will help the clients’ con­fi­dence in your agency to grow if the data is timely and accurate.

It is impor­tant to hire an agency that is care­ful in its hir­ing prac­tices and train­ing pro­ce­dures. If the hir­ing and train­ing is per­formed cor­rectly, the chances of suc­cess go way up on get­ting your col­lec­tions done.

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