Building a World-Class Recovery & Collection Strategy: The Complete Starter Kit

By on March 7th, 2022 in Company News, Industry Insights
TrueAccord Blog

Delinquencies are a predictable reality for any business that handles payments, but the most efficient and effective way to recover delinquent funds isn’t always as predictable.

A recovery team could theoretically chase down every last delinquent dollar. But it would soon reach the point at which the operational cost of the effort – and the associated legal and reputational risk – would cut into profitability.

With so many factors involved, it can be difficult to even know where to start…

The planning process should start with an in-depth understanding of what makes a world-class recovery strategy in today’s digital-first age, a look at the big picture for your specific industry all the way down to your detailed metrics, and KPIs that should be steering your strategy. Consumers expect a seamless, personalized experience in every financial transaction, and your recovery operations can continue to deliver that all the way through the customer journey when you have the right strategy in place.

There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to debt recovery and collection, but getting started doesn’t have to be daunting when you have the right resources to get you going.  

Beyond Best Practices and into Actionable Tactics 

Go beyond general best practices and start plugging in your own data with the tools inside our new Recovery & Collection Starter Kit. We have assembled guides, calculators, cheat sheets, and more to provide the frameworks and metrics for your organization to get started architecting the right recovery strategy for the long run. 

Each starter kit includes:

  • World-Class Recovery Guide pick your industry edition!
    • Manage delinquencies without sacrificing consumer experience
    • Balance performance with operation metrics and consumer-focused KPIs
    • Compare, contrast, and evaluate in-house vs partner collection strategies
  • Cheat Sheet: Top KPIs for Your Recovery Operations 
    • Differences between traditional debt collection metrics, digital engagement tracking, operational KPIs, and more
    • New consumer-centric KPIs for today’s most effective recovery strategy 
    • How to calculate profitability of a collection operation using operational metrics
  • Interactive Recovery & Collection Calculator
    • Enter your business’s KPIs to measure the profitability of your recovery
    • Discover opportunities to improve the reach, resolution funnel, and cost effectiveness of your recovery operation
    • Scenario plan how much in additional revenue and cost savings the shift to an intelligent, digital strategy can drive for your business
  • Choosing a Recovery Partner: Top 6 Questions to Ask
    • Detailed questions on communication, technology, risks, and more
    • Why each question matters for both profitability and consumer-experience 
    • Based on each question, what to look for in a potential partner’s responses 

Download your Recovery & Collection Starter Kit now>>

These tools will teach you how to maximize profitability by efficiently recovering money lent to customers or members—while simultaneously maintaining consumer loyalty. Now is the time for businesses across verticals to embrace a disruptive, obsessively consumer-centric mindset for recovery and collection, and experience the results of this new approach. 

How to Use Recovery KPIs: Your Keys to Building a World-Class Strategy

By on February 17th, 2022 in Industry Insights
TrueAccord Blog

Measuring the success of a recovery strategy goes beyond just the dollars and cents recovered. Yes, the goal of a recovery operation is to maximize profitability by efficiently recovering money lent to consumers, but other key factors — like consumer experience and retention — are also important in evaluating the success of your business.  

A recovery team could theoretically chase down every last delinquent dollar, but doing so is often not worth the  operational cost of the effort, and the associated legal and reputational risk can cut into profitability. 

In this blog post, we’ll share the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) for collections and recovery — and how you can use them to create a seamless, scalable, and world-class recovery practice. 

Meet the Metrics 

Whether looking at portfolio performance, operational profitability, or consumer experience, different KPIs play a role in measuring the success of a recovery strategy. Collectively, these metrics make up the “language” of recovery and collection — helping organizations understand the fundamentals of their operation.

Here are a few of the most integral metrics to know:

Accounts per Employee (APE) or Accounts to Creditor Ratio (ACR): the number of delinquent accounts that can be serviced by an individual recovery agent 

Net Loss Rate or Net Charge Off Rate: measures the total percent of dollars loaned that ended up getting written off as a loss

Delinquency Rate: total dollars that are in delinquency (starting as soon as a borrower misses a payment on a loan) as a percentage of total outstanding loans – often an early warning sign on the total volume of delinquent debt

Promise to Pay Rate: the percentage of delinquent accounts that make a verbal or digital commitment to pay

Promise to Pay Kept Rate: the percentage of delinquent accounts that maintain a stated commitment to pay

Roll Rate: the percentage of delinquent dollars that “roll” from one delinquency bucket to the next over a given period of time – provides visibility into the velocity with which debts are heading into charge off

Profitability of a Collections Operation Formula: R x ResF x E 

R [Reach]: percentage of consumers in delinquency can you actually reach 

ResF [Resolution Funnel]: how effectively you can convert initial contact with a consumer into a commitment to pay – and ultimately, a payment promise kept (see Promise to Pay Rate and Promise to Pay Kept Rate) 

E [Efficiency]: calculation of what the “unit economics” of your collection are and how much it costs, on average, for every account that you rehabilitate

The following diagram highlights the relationship between these core operational metrics of a recovery strategy and portfolio-level outcomes.

In the hyper-competitive financial services space, consumer experience is a source of competitive advantage. That’s why it stands to reason that alongside the “traditional” metrics we see above, forward-looking fintechs and lending organizations should include KPIs that measure the value of consumer experiences:

Net Promoter Score (NPS): how likely a consumer is to recommend a given brand after an experience with a brand’s collection organization

Customer Retention Rate: how likely a consumer is to be reacquired by a given brand after his or her delinquent account is rehabilitated

How to Make the Most Out of These Metrics

So you have traditional metrics and consumer-focused KPIs, but how do you use it all? Managing performance with operational and consumer-centric metrics requires understanding the economics of recovery. Successful organizations will use the data to measure trends against the company’s own historical data, evaluate partners and strategies, and understand the big picture.

Understand the Big Picture

Visualize the relationship between operational metrics and portfolio-level outcomes. Conduct scenario planning exercises (e.g., “if we were able to improve the reach of our efforts by 25% through digital outreach, we would be able to reduce our net loss rate by 750 basis points”).

Measure Trends Longitudinally

Benchmark against a company’s own historical data as the collection team rolls out new strategies and tactics (e.g., “we boosted our promise to pay kept rate by 350 basis points relative to the previous vintage with pre-payment date reminders”)

Evaluate Partners

Assess potential collection vendors against a standard slate of metrics and KPIs (e.g., “of the three vendors that we evaluated for our collections, which one led to the greatest reduction in roll rate?”)

Moving Towards World-Class Recovery 

Understanding collection KPIs and how to use them is a critical part of creating an effective recovery strategy — learn about all the components of a successful collection operation in our new ebook, the Guide to World-Class Recovery. Available for download now, this ebook provides the tools and frameworks to ensure that you’re architecting the right recovery strategy for your company for the long run. 

Download the Guide to World-Class Recovery»