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Services
First-Party Collections
Overview
Most companies have historically maintained an internal collection department that is responsible for collecting past due accounts or loans receivable and minimizing the company’s bad debt losses. These collection departments perform a variety of collection activities on accounts ranging from the initial stages of delinquency through the point where the company charges off the account as a bad debt and assigns the account to a repossession company or third party collection agency. Through this process, the companies devote tremendous resources to the collection function – collection staff payroll, benefits and other overhead.
Over the past several years, many companies have started to re-think this approach. They are discovering that they are spending considerable time, effort and money on activities that are not their core competency. As a result, some of their focus has diverted from their primary business and they do not always have the most effective and efficient systems and tools for handling the collection function. Moreover, internal collections department are often overloaded and do not always have the resources to effectively reach all customers who are early in the delinquency. Also, several clients do not find it economical to collect small balance receivables.
Benefits of outsourcing
First Party Collection can be structured in many different ways, but in general we will work with your customers as representatives of your company, not as a third party collection agency, to get the receivables paid. Some of the benefits of outsourcing early-stage delinquent accounts to us include:
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Reduced costs – Outsourcing a portion of your collection function will enable you to reduce staffing and related collection expenses.
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Enhanced collection performance – True North has professional employees trained specifically to handle the collection of delinquent accounts.
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Skip tracing – True North is committed to maximizing recoveries for our clients.
Advantages of Outsourcing to True North
We utilize state-of-the-art skip tracing techniques and
are constantly researching new technologies and sources of information.
True North can, within 24 hours of assignment of accounts, commence an
effective mailing and outbound telephone campaign that contacts every
customer and requests payment of the delinquent balance. Our clients benefit
from outsourcing first-party collections to us because:
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All accounts are entered into the computer system and scrubbed for accurate addresses. If contact information is missing, True North uses various skip tracing resources including US Post Office National Change of Address service consumer databases such as Merlin, Accurint, and Donnelly databases; credit agency reports as well as our own internal consumer database, Public records such as DMV records and other sources tax assessor and voter registration records, and other sources for most recent addresses and telephone numbers.
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Our address scrubbing process has been proven to improve mail receipt by 10% and accelerate the collection process.
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Our collection notices are compliant with all state and federal laws and are optimized for where the account is in the payment or delinquency cycle.
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True North often has superior technology and people resources than our clients that enables us to make these calls rapidly and effectively. For example:
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True North associates are trained in using various skip tracing resources for updated telephone numbers;
- True North employs predictive dialers for high volume contacts. The predictive dialer is integrated with out collection software as well as our phone systems to optimize both outbound and inbound calls.
- True North collectors have immediate on-line access to credit files to maximize recovery for clients.
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Our clients’ volume of delinquent customers is often cyclical. We can assist in keeping clients’ operating costs low by working on their overflow business during peak periods.
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True North associates often have higher levels of collections experience than client resources. They are courteous and effective in their collection methods.
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Quality assurance and tracking: We continuously monitor quality throughout the EBO process. Our process is designed to capture various operational metrics that allows us to measure quality and success of our program. We also provide metrics that clients can use to compare our results with their own internal performance or with the performance of our peer vendors.
Clients are provided with system generated customized reports that describe all account activity and latest account status. These reports can either be provided to clients monthly (or more frequently, if requested by client) or clients can access these reports real-time through our client web access program.
Our unique approach ensures superior results for clients while still ensuring high level of satisfaction among the clients’ customers.
