Consumers have been steadily increasing their engagement with online bill pay platforms over the last decade. In fact, surveys indicate that as far back as 2016 the scales tipped in favor of online bill pay. Despite the popularity, many industries have been slow to adopt the technology that provides consumers with this ability- the ARM industry is one of them. Collection agencies, many of which remain small enterprises, faced with heavy regulation have chosen to stick to tried and true traditional methods rather than venture down the unknown road of self-service technologies.
Professional Credit has never followed the conventional collections model. Early on we saw the value in pursuing technologies that could improve the consumer experience and impact revenue. Today we employ a variety of technologies unique for the industry, from speech analytics to the most modern ARM software. Years prior to the online bill pay trend, we developed PCSDirectPay, a consumer-centric self-service portal designed to assist consumers in taking control of their account management. Despite being early adopters, it wasn’t until Spring of 2020 that we saw our own numbers reflect the engagement levels that other sectors have.
Perhaps this was fueled by the pandemic, or perhaps it is a reflection of a greater shift for modernization in the industry. Last year the CFPB finally reviewed and amended the FDCPA to provide new guidelines for digital engagement and consumer communications that go into effect in November. This assists in linking the required disclosures to digital communications creating a clear path to compliance for channels that had been previously difficult to navigate. These changes alone should promote more widespread adoption of consumer-centric technologies in the industry and will likely boost engagement with self-service platforms even more as they become the “norm.”
There is an argument to be made for lowering costs to collect by increasing consumer engagement with online platforms. Our in-house data science team recently performed a study analyzing nearly a million accounts to determine how exactly these technologies impact revenue. The results showed digital payments had a greater significance for account recovery than we had anticipated.
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