Building a Digital-First, Third-Party Collections Solution with Snap Finance

By on August 13th, 2021 in Industry Insights, Machine Learning, Product and Technology

In 2019, Todd Johnsen, Snap Finance’s Senior Manager of Collections Vendors, was charged with doing something that had never been done at Snap before: developing a third-party collections program. According to Johnsen, “At that time, the only recovery program for charge-off accounts was a call-and-collect settlement at tax season. I knew we could do better, but we’d have to start from scratch.” Johnsen also found a large amount of backlog accounts that had never been worked by a collections agency, as well as the need for a forward flow third-party recovery program.

Johnsen and team surveyed their options: they looked at both traditional agencies (predominantly making outbound calls) and digital-first collections solution providers, like TrueAccord. Johnsen was particularly interested in how digital-first providers like TrueAccord used machine learning to optimize their relationships with consumers via digital channels like email, SMS, and push notifications. 

“My thought process was — we work with subprime consumers who may have bad associations with debt collection,” said Johnsen. “This audience may have already had experiences with incessant collection phone calls, and they are used to avoiding them. I wanted to find an agency that was doing things differently. I knew that TrueAccord was using technology and digital channels in a way that other providers weren’t.”

While Johnsen was curious about working with a digital-first agency like TrueAccord, he wasn’t ready to go all-in immediately. The Snap Finance team decided to engage both a traditional agency and TrueAccord and compare the results. In evaluating the competing partners, key considerations included liquidation rate performance, security and compliance, and optimization efficiency. The result? TrueAccord delivered better results across all measured parameters.

“The reality of the results really knocked me out,” said Johnsen. “What we saw was almost 25-35% better performance on the accounts that we placed with TrueAccord, compared to the accounts we placed with traditional agencies. It was a real eye-opener. In fact, TrueAccord is number one in every tier I have them in. We’ve seen nothing but huge benefits as a result of that individual, digital-first interaction that TrueAccord tailors to each consumer.”

To learn more about TrueAccord’s work with Snap Finance, read the full case study.