This week, Breaking Banks host Brett King chatted about the ideas of debt rehabilitation with Ohad Samet, CEO of TrueAccord, and how machine learning and AI can help people fix their credit situations.
Continue reading “Live from LendIt: TrueAccord on Breaking Banks”
Our CEO , Ohad Samet, will be part of a panel discussing Artificial Intelligence Uses in Fintech. The panel will be held at 2:15pm Eastern on Tuesday, 3/7.
Continue reading “Hear our CEO talk about AI in Fintech at LendIt”
In a recent American Banker article, our team is saying: the regulatory discussion around phone calls in debt collection is rapidly becoming irrelevant for one very important reason: consumers don’t answer their phones.
Though historically resistant to innovation, the collection industry feels pressured to make changes. Consumer preference, requirements from clients and mounting costs dictate increased use of technology – a welcome trend. Among those new tools, we are starting to see increasing adoption of emails for collections. Agencies have a small selection of vendors to blast out an email. Agencies with large call centers view this as a cost reduction exercise, and another way to get consumers to call in and talk to their agents.
Continue reading “Why batch-sending emails aren’t all there is for debt collection”
Consumer behavior is changing. As more of us are glued to our mobile phones, emails, and social media accounts, it’s clear that the old ways of collecting debt are quickly becoming irrelevant. Still, the market doesn’t offer a multitude of collection solutions aimed at responding to the digital consumer. When we present our machine learning-based solution to prospective customers, we’re often asked about the difference between our solution and a self service portal. Although both solutions are digital, they cannot be less alike.
Continue reading “Self service portal vs. machine learning-based collections”
We’ve heard varying sentiments about the November 8th election results. Behind the scenes, many in the debt collection industry are excited and happy for them. They believe a Trump presidency will put an end to regulation in debt collection, and put the industry “back in business”. This is a short sighted view, focused on the wrong drivers of change for the industry. Debt collection and President Trump may not be the great allies some believe they will be.
Continue reading “Debt collection and President Trump: not much will change”
The CFPB put the full video from their debt collection field hearing on their YouTube channel. Participants were allowed 2 minutes to respond, and our CEO took that opportunity (watch here).
His comments:
Thank you for the time today. My name is Ohad, I’m CEO of TrueAccord, a company that uses data and machine learning to fundamentally change the consumer experience in debt collection. We’ve been studying the new proposal since yesterday. We believe it is a big step towards improving consumer protection. Weeding out bad actors is going to level the playing field and create a race to the top that will benefit everyone.
When finalizing the rule, we think the CFPB should continue to encourage innovation in this space by providing clear and unambiguous guidelines on how to use new technology in the collections process. As a data-driven startup company, we have empirical evidence showing hat using new technologies in the collection space – text, email, social media, digitizing the dispute process – significantly improves consumer protection.
One, it improves protection measured by consumer feedback and a marked reduction in consumer complaints. Consumers understand and react to our personalized, targeted communication.
Two, it significantly reduces communication frequency; reduces call frequency by up to 95%, well under the limitations proposed in this new proposal, using channels that consumers feel are much less intrusive.
Finally, it does all of the above while meeting or exceeding traditional performance in liquidation. Nobody is going to go out of business by using new technology (and we’ll add here: versus continuing to insist on hardly-compliant calling tactics).
Again, the CFPB should considering supporting innovation by providing clear guidance for the use of technology. It will improve consumer protection and will help he industry as a whole. We look forward to cooperating with the CFPB and policymakers on this shared goal.
Last week, TrueAccord participated in the SBREFA panel for the CFPB’s proposal outline for upcoming debt collection rule. The CFPB invited Small Entity Representatives (SERs) to discuss how the outline could influence their businesses. The industry expects a more fleshed out proposal quite early in 2017. One thing is clear: this rule will change the debt collection industry forever. Creditors, collectors and buyers should take note and start adapting to, rather than fighting the rule.
While this isn’t the final proposal, we can observe hints of the huge changes to come; it’s such a departure from current practices that applying this proposal retroactively may erase the majority of the debt buying industry. We don’t believe this is what the CFPB is aiming for. We see true desire to change operating principles in the debt collection and buying space, while showing a path forward. The outline included explicit references to new technologies, and some discussion of proper use of email. It also signaled the CFPB’s intent to provide safe harbor where it can, promoting best practices in the process. You can read our initial response here.
Continue reading “The CFPB’s proposal outline and SBREFA panel”
Compliance is top of mind for the debt collection industry. Highly regulated at the State and Federal levels, collectors are subject to dozens of laws and regulations that govern every aspect of their operations. A highly litigious culture based on strict liability laws means a constant threat of lawsuits, resulting in shift s in courts’ interpretations of various statutes. To pile on, debt collectors are subject to active enforcement and rulemaking activity and attention by lawmakers, leading to ongoing updates in debt collection laws. What can debt collectors do to get ahead of them curve? At TrueAccord, we know code driven compliance is the answer.
Continue reading “New white paper: code driven compliance keeps you safe”
Automation and digitization offer new tools for the collection strategist, augmenting the traditional building blocks. These new tools, introducing flexibility and sophistication that are usually attributed to other parts of the business, can mitigate common pitfalls.
Continue reading “Augmenting your strategy with automation: part three of three”