The accounts receivable management industry – from collection agencies to debt buyers, and even creditors – is currently enamored with using a legal collection strategy. As the economy recovers, that strategy might gain even more traction with the rise of employment, a key aspect in leveraging the legal channel through wage garnishment. But even taking the current economic climate out of the equation, I feel that a viable legal collection strategy is an important back office function for any ARM company.

A judgment is a great way to put your ARM organization into a position to recover a balance in full, obviously. But litigation is an expensive collection channel that requires meticulous planning and a well-designed strategy.

There are a few things that you must have in place before even considering a legal collection strategy. First, you need an attorney that has meaningful involvement in the accounts that may be placed for litigation. A collection agency can hire an attorney in-house or forward the work to an outside lawyer.

Second, ARM organizations must have a close relationship with their clients, whether they are the original creditor or a debt buyer, to ensure proper account documentation. This is critical to any legal collection strategy. Not only must an attorney be able to produce the original loan documentation, but they must also be able to show that legal and attorneys’ fees were allowed in the credit agreement.

After you have the basics in place, you have to judge and score each individual account to make sure they are suit-worthy. There are volumes of information on how to properly do this.

Principally, you are looking at a debtor’s ability to repay, like with any other scoring: Is the debtor employed? Do they own real property? Do you have the correct address and contact info? But in a legal scoring environment, you must also factor in the size of the account. Remember: court costs are paid up front, and regardless of the outcome, it’s spent money.

In addition to the size of the account, you have to dig deeper into the scoring questions: Is the property in foreclosure or pre-foreclosure? Are there any other suits outstanding against them? If an account meets all of the filing challenges, but you fail to identify other suits, a judgment will do about as much good as not collecting at all. What do you think happens to a judgment that’s stuck behind seven others, or is stuck behind a group like the IRS? I’ll tell you: the judgment doesn’t get paid, eventually expires, and becomes worthless.

I’ve been in the collections business since 1987, beginning as a collector and rising to the General Manager level. Part of that time I spent as the head of an extensive legal network for the ARM organization I worked for. Since then, I’ve been helping ARM companies realize efficiencies in their collection processes. Some of the things I’ve seen on the legal side boggle my mind.

One collection agency had some 6,000 old judgments, and they really didn’t have a plan for what to do with them. “We don’t really have time for this right now,” they said when I pressed. So we had to set up a strategy for them to deal with their dead judgments. This will be applicable to more ARM companies in the next couple of years.

As unemployment slowly improves, many judgments won in the depths of the recession will become enforceable. It is imperative that ARM organizations with recent vintage judgments re-run employment and asset verification as a part of their “dead judgment” strategy.

A well-defined legal collection strategy can be a huge boost to any ARM company. But if care is not taken at the outset and it is implemented incorrectly, it can literally kill a firm.

Denise Cross has worked as a consultant for four years to the LexisNexis® Accounts Receivable Management unit. Her primary focus is workflow analysis and design.

Skip tracing is a high priority in any collections environment, and developing this skill set in your staff is absolutely critical. It will be even more imperative to have a retooled skip tracing strategy as new accounts flood the ARM industry in the midst of economic recovery.

With charge-off rates still near historic highs, creditors will be farming out more work to debt collectors and selling more accounts to buyers. As unemployment (hopefully) declines, the accounts will be much more liquid. Contacting the right party in the most efficient way possible will be imperative.

Statistics demonstrate that typically 40% to 60% of consumer accounts in a collection portfolio have no point of contact information for the consumer. Therefore, skip trace efforts are clearly a high priority. The failure to develop this skill set in your new hires can have a devastating effect on achieving production goals, and lengthen the time frame for a return on investment in new hires.

High turnover in the collection industry only compounds this situation. Add to that the necessity to bring on more collectors, and most ARM firms are going to be breaking in a lot of “newbies” over the remainder of 2010.

There is a new feature in LexisNexis® Accurint® for Collections to help locate consumers, with the secondary benefit of developing your staff into skilled skip tracers. This feature is called Skip Wizard, and it is a sequential process to more efficiently locate consumers.

The skip trace novice is first asked to input the consumer’s social security number and the current balance of the account being analyzed. The Skip Wizard will then utilize intelligent search functionality, analyze the data returned along with an evaluation of available relationship data, and determine the best possible course of action for the collector to follow. Skip Wizard will teach your collectors a logical step-by-step process for skip tracing while they work.

This is a solution that can fit any type of collection environment: first party, third party, and debt purchasers. It provides a standardized treatment strategy based upon demonstrated best practices on all accounts, to ensure compliance with requirements from the original creditor. The Skip Wizard can also provide collection organizations the ability to limit the scope of work performed based on account balances.

We expect an explosion of new hires in the ARM industry over the next few years. Developing and maintaining an efficient skip tracing procedure will be paramount, and we think we’ve created a tool to help the ARM industry do just that.

Mike Dozier is a Product Consultant responsible for developing solutions for the collections and recovery industry in the LexisNexis® Risk Management Group. Joining LexisNexis in 2007, Mike has been in the collection industry over 25 years, holding executive operations positions with some of the top collection agencies, collection law firms and debt buyers in the U.S.

New York, NY (June 22, 2010) – LexisNexis Risk Solutions today announced the availability of LexisNexis® Accurint for Collections Skip Wizard, a new solution that simplifies skip tracing, turning novice collectors into skilled skip-tracers without expensive training. Skip Wizard improves efficiency and productivity by providing a customizable, step-by-step process that uses intelligent search functionality, data analysis and an evaluation of relationship data to guide collectors through the skip tracing process, helping them determine the best possible course of action.

Typically, 40 percent to 60 percent of accounts in a collection portfolio have no valid phone number for a point of contact when received from a client. As a result, collection organizations must rely on skip tracing to locate and contact debtors. Skip tracing, however, can be difficult to learn and challenging to master. Acquiring proficiency requires experience and training.

“The feedback from our collectors has been outstanding,” said Paul Allen, general manager of First Financial Asset Management Inc., a U.S.-based accounts receivable management firm that has been beta testing the solution this spring. “Skip Wizard is an incredibly efficient tool that eliminates many tedious steps in the skip tracing process. Skip Wizard enables our less experienced collectors to quickly and accurately locate the information they need. Our collectors saw immediate results; in fact, collectors who didn’t have it were envious of those who did.”

Because of frequent turn over in the industry and the scarcity of experienced skip locators, many collection organizations rely on less skilled collectors to trace and locate debtors, resulting in fewer skip locates and high associated expenses. Skip Wizard was designed to help address these problems by enabling collection organizations to overcome on-line trace and locate challenges by providing collectors with a simple and easy to follow workflow. As a result, Skip Wizard reduces the amount of training required to achieve skip tracing efficiency and decreases unproductive calling, allowing an organization to better allocate their skip tracing resources.

Skip Wizard first attempts to provide collectors with direct contact information for a debtor. If a collector is then unsuccessful in locating a debtor, subsequent contact information is provided for leads that may be able to assist in providing relevant information. Duplicate information is filtered so that only unique results are presented to the collector during a Skip Wizard session.

“Collection organizations tend to struggle at effectively managing the performance of skip portfolios because skip tracing is such a difficult skill to master,” said Robert Fite, vice president, LexisNexis Receivables Management Solutions. “Skip Wizard walks collectors through a workflow drawing upon best practices for locating hard-to-find debtors, thereby reducing the expense associated with training collection staff, and improving performance.”

Incorporating best practices collections techniques, Skip Wizard ensures collections organizations that collectors are following a standardized approach on each account. In addition, the solution can be customized to allow organizations to limit the scope of work performed on an account based on balance.

About LexisNexis
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of content-enabled workflow solutions designed specifically for professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting, and academic markets. LexisNexis originally pioneered online information with its Lexis® and Nexis® services. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in more than 100 countries with 15,000 employees worldwide.

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions
LexisNexis® Risk Solutions is the leader in providing essential information that helps advance industry and society. Building on the legacy of proven LexisNexis® services from the past 30 years, our cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced scoring analytics provide total solutions that address evolving client needs in the risk sector while upholding high standards of security and privacy. LexisNexis Risk Solutions serves commercial organizations and government agencies and is comprised of several affiliated corporations, each offering premier customer-focused solutions. For more information, visit www.lexisnexis.com/risk.

Media Contact
Fiona McCaul
LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Phone: 678.694.3651
fiona.mccaul@lexisnexis.com

Posted by Mary Wisniewski, Collection Technology.net

Sometimes a little help can go a long way.

And skiptracers just got an assistance injection, with LexisNexis Risk Solutions recently unveiling a tool that helps users navigate the skiptracing labyrinth.

Dubbed Skip Wizard, the tool assists users with “intelligently” searching for individuals, explains Robert Fite, vice president of LexisNexis Receivables Management Solutions. How? By walking the user through the appropriate collection steps based on the balance expected to be collected.

“A lot of organizations will only allow collectors to search for phone information in a limited way,” Fite says. “If they did one more search, they could get it right.”

The Wizard aims to guide them to this successful hit. The target user? Someone newer to collections or skiptracing.

Looking ahead, LexisNexis is working on a contact database management tool that warns collectors when they shouldn’t dial someone based on historical calls. For example, the technology would alert a collector to avoid calling a neighbor, if it’s already been proven to be a wrong number.

“This is where the industry is going,” says Fite. “Controlled and tightly integrated management.”

View Mary Wisniewski’s original posting at CollectionTechnology.net.

by Linda Straub Jones

Consumer bankruptcy filings surged in 2009, as expected. More than 1.4 million consumer filings were recorded last year, the most since 2005, the year new bankruptcy laws went into effect.

While the economy will eventually turn around, maybe even this year, consumers will still be filing for bankruptcy protection at very high levels for the foreseeable future. In the first two months of 2010, filings were up year over year. And for 2010, we’re projecting another 1.8 million consumer bankruptcy filings.

This trend will force ARM companies to deal with more and more “hits” on their accounts. Many already use bankruptcy monitoring products, like LexisNexis Banko. But there is a new push to give clients more information, quicker. And it helps to understand how bankruptcy monitoring products have evolved to see how the new products fit into a workflow.

Originally, bankruptcy products were designed to help ARM clients avoid the Automatic Stay; they would simply notify a client when a bankruptcy petition was filed. When an account goes into bankruptcy, creditors and their collection partners must cease all communications or they can be fined. But often, creditors and ARM providers would be notified by the bankruptcy court by mail, which could take some time. Automatic notification cut out notification periods, reducing exposure to protected accounts.

Bankruptcy products evolved to help creditors make better credit granting decisions and manage a consumer’s entire portfolio across many credit products. Some large banks will extend several different types of loans to a customer – car loan, credit cards, mortgage, etc. We at LexisNexis can host a client’s entire portfolio on our servers and batch process for matches in the bankruptcy system. When we get a hit, we notify the clients and they can update their files appropriately.

The product evolution has worked well for the credit granting and ARM industries. But traditional bankruptcy products typically notified clients only at the beginning and end of the bankruptcy process, that is, filing and discharge. LexisNexis now has a product that allows users to track every event in the process.

LexisNexis® Banko® Events Monitoring tracks 540 events in the lifecycle of a bankruptcy. Clients can choose which events to monitor and on which type of filing (Chapter 7 or 13). Instead of manually searching court records services, organizations can be automatically updated when each event occurs. This helps with the most important aspects of bankruptcy management: timing. If you act too quickly on an account, you can run into legal trouble. If you’re too slow, you risk losing opportunities to recover debt.

I’ve been in the credit and collection industry for 26 years, and this environment is the most challenging I’ve ever seen. If new bankruptcy laws scared many in the industry away from these accounts initially, the current environment is forcing them to take a look at how to get the most out of their protected accounts. In the absence of a mountain of administrative work, automated solutions can help navigate this current wave of filings.

Linda Straub Jones is a Collections Solutions Product Consultant at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.

Question: I understand the need to get notified when my accounts are included in bankruptcy petitions, but how do the notification services work?

Answer: (from Linda Straub Jones, Collections Solutions Product Consultant at LexisNexis Risk Solutions)

It is very important that all accounts are properly scrubbed for bankruptcy filings, that is true.

Once a debtor has filed for bankruptcy they are under protection by the Bankruptcy Act’s Automatic Stay (USC Title 11, Chapter 3, Subchapter IV, Section 362). Paragraph 6 of this section states that “…any act to collect, assess, or recover a claim against the debtor that arose before the commencement of the case under this title…” is a violation of the Automatic Stay. Therefore, if collectors contact a debtor after they have filed for bankruptcy, they are in violation of the Automatic Stay and could be fined by the court or sued by the debtor.

But filings aren’t the only event that ARM organizations need to be made aware of. Dismissals, reinstatements, conversions, notices of assets and discharges also prompt specific responses from creditors and their ARM partners.

Bankruptcy notification services can expedite the notification process. When a bankruptcy is filed, the courts must send notices to all creditors who are listed on the creditor’s matrix. The way the courts do this is to send the notification to the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC) and in turn the BNC mails the notice to the listed creditors.

The BNC offers an Electronic Bankruptcy Noticing (EBN) service, which allows creditors to receive their notification in one of four different electronic ways: Email link, Email attachment, Fax or Electronic Data Interface (EDI). This allows for notices to be sent electronically rather than through the mail, saving time, paper and postage. Although EBN will not eliminate 100 percent of paper notices through the mail, it typically eliminates most of them.

You can sign up with EBN, or you can have a “middle man” be your Authorized Agent to receive the EBN feed via EDI on your behalf. As your authorized agent, a bankruptcy notification company will save you the time and cost of installing and maintaining your own EDI software.

Logistically, bankruptcy notification services typically host a client’s entire portfolio on their servers. The company can then batch process all of the accounts that fall under the contract agreement and return bankruptcy event hits to clients electronically, saving time and labor resources dedicated to opening mail and manually tracking bankruptcies proceedings.

Using this information, organizations can execute on their bankruptcy strategy. Many companies share a standard policy of removing all bankruptcies from their debtor files as soon as they receive the bankruptcy notice—simply accepting them as losses and an unavoidable cost of doing business. But statistics show that on average more than 50 percent of bankrupt accounts do have money and, therefore, can and do pay some or all of their debts. Food for thought when deciding on a bankruptcy policy.

by Patrick Lunsford

When long-awaited bankruptcy reform legislation was passed in 2005, it came with a promise of lower overall consumer filings going forward and stricter rules for those that did seek protection. While the impact was seen immediately in 2006, the prolonged recession has driven filings back to pre-reform levels, and there is a chance total consumer filings in 2010 could approach all-time records.

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) took effect in October 2005. The law requires a greater percentage of consumers who file for bankruptcy to repay a larger portion of their debts. Under the legislation, many consumers can no longer avoid payments on credit card debt and other unsecured loans by claiming bankruptcy protection under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Code. Instead, these consumers are now subject to a means test that consigns many debtors to Chapter 13 status. Under this classification, cases are reviewed by judges who can order and administer repayment plans that vary with the consumers’ ability to repay financial obligations to creditors.

Historical filing data support some of the intended effects of Act. In the 12 months ended March 31, 2006, there were 1.8 million bankruptcies filed in U.S. Circuit and District courts. By contrast, 700,000 bankruptcies were filed in the 12 months ended March 31, 2007, a 61.2 percent decrease over the same period in the previous year.

Driven largely by a flood of filing activity in the run-up to BAPCPA’s effective date, there were 2 million total bankruptcy filings in the U.S. by the end of calendar year 2005, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. This was the first time in U.S. history that bankruptcy filings exceeded the two million mark in a single calendar year. In the first three quarters of 2006, total consumer filings were 429,522, down 69 percent from the same period in 2005. By the end of the 2006 calendar year, only 600,000 personal bankruptcy petitions had been filed.

But the trend has been moving higher ever since, culminating in an eye-popping 1.4 million total consumer bankruptcy petitions filed in 2009. The figure is near the 1.55 million average annual filings from 2001 to 2004, before bankruptcy reform was passed and following a milder recession in the early 2000s.

Most analysts expect total consumer bankruptcies to come in around 1.7 million to 1.8 million in 2010. If they are right, it would be the second-highest annual total ever recorded, behind only the inflated numbers from 2005.

Chapter 7 vs. Chapter 13

While the overall increase in consumer bankruptcy filings is troubling for creditors and ARM organizations, the rise in Chapter 7 filings directly contradicts an intended benefit of the reform effort.

When the stricter bankruptcy rules took effect in 2005, a major goal was to require more consumer filers to rely on Chapter 13, which requires debtors with regular income to repay debts in full, or in part, over several years. The means test imbedded in the new law identifies and validates employment in the bankruptcy process.

The precipitous rise in unemployment over the past 18 months has caused many consumers to fail the means test. This results in a Chapter 7 filing, which allows a court to discharge most unsecured consumer debt, including credit card accounts. Numbers from the American Bankruptcy Institute support the shift back to Chapter 7 filings.

In 2004, Chapter 7 filings accounted for 71.5 percent of all consumer bankruptcy protection petitions. In the rush to file ahead of the new laws, that percentage jumped to 80 percent in 2005. The following year, with the new rules in place, Chapter 7 filings accounted for only 58.4 percent of all consumer bankruptcies. It has steadily increased in each subsequent year.

In 2009, Chapter 7 flings accounted for 71.4 percent of all consumer filings. And the pace of Chapter 7 increases far outpaces the growth in Chapter 13 filings; Chapter 7 filings rose 41 percent in 2009, while Chapter 13 filings were up just 12 percent.

“New Normal” or Economically Driven?

Because of the breadth, depth and complexity of the current downturn, it is difficult to compare current consumer bankruptcy filings against historical readings. It is reasonable to assume that the spike in filings in 2008, 2009 and 2010 is due principally to historically high unemployment and underemployment. We will not get an accurate sense of the impact of the new bankruptcy rules until at least the end of 2011.

Testing of the new law also clouds the picture. There have already been high-profile challenges to the law. In early March, in a minor win for the government, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a provision of the legislation that said bankruptcy attorneys could not give their clients advice to take on more debt. Last year, there was a popular movement to amend bankruptcy rules to allow for mortgage modification in bankruptcy proceedings. And there is currently a proposal before the United State Courts to require even more documentation on the part of creditors when filing proofs of claim in a bankruptcy proceeding. In other words, the law is currently in a “shake out” phase in its first five years of existence.

Regardless of the outcome of the movements to amend and modify the new bankruptcy law, parties with a particular interest in consumer bankruptcy should expect higher levels of filing in 2010 and 2011, with Chapter 7 filings accounting for an outsized proportion of consumer filings.

New York, NY, April 5, 2010– LexisNexis® Risk Solutions today announced the availability of LexisNexis® Banko® Events Monitoring, a new feature available with the LexisNexis® Receivables Management Solutions suite that automates the process of monitoring bankruptcy events and helps collections organizations improve efficiency, reduce cost and identify new sources of revenue. In preliminary customer trials, the solution is proven to save collections agencies and first-party debt collectors 50 percent or more on costs associated with manually monitoring bankruptcy events.

“In our current economic environment, bankruptcies are increasing like never before, and collections professionals need access to the most current, comprehensive data possible in order to collect on accounts and reduce loss exposure,” said Robert Fite, vice president, LexisNexis Receivables Management Solutions. “LexisNexis Banko Events Monitoring allows collections professionals to focus on the business of making decisions, increasing efficiency and profitability.”

The number of people and businesses filing for bankruptcy is increasing at a staggering pace – 1.4 million petitions were submitted in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. With the number of bankruptcy cases increasing dramatically, it is vital for collections professionals to monitor bankruptcy events such as attempts to have a court forgive certain debts, to have an accurate picture of their debt portfolio. Every time they want to check status on a debtor, collections professionals must conduct manual, labor-intensive searches using PACER, the federal court case electronic access system.

Banko Events Monitoring helps debt collectors overcome this problem by automating the monitoring process of bankruptcy events. The solution works by automatically monitoring every daily court docket entry for every bankruptcy case, and then provides collections organizations with relevant information on the debtors and events they need to track. As a result, collections organizations are empowered with information they need to make better and faster decisions about debt recovery. In addition, users save costs associated with purchasing individual PACER reports, improve employee productivity, minimize the need for manual investigations, and reduce their loss exposure.

In a beta trial of Banko Events Monitoring conducted with nine clients across several industries, including a collections agency, mortgage lender and automotive lender, the solution delivered average savings of 50 percent when compared to the cost of manually searching for bankruptcy events. To cite one example, an auto loan company had historically only been able to monitor approximately 7,500 of their 43,500 active bankrupt accounts. Banko Events Monitoring enabled the company to monitor all 43,500 of their active accounts – and for less than half the cost of manually searching 17 percent of the prior caseload.

LexisNexis Banko Events Monitoring is a key component of the LexisNexis Receivables Management solutions suite that helps collections businesses minimize unnecessary operational expenses and focus their efforts on the most collectible accounts. Banko Events Monitoring is an added functionality to Banko®, a fully customizable solution that allows businesses to search comprehensive nationwide bankruptcy databases to quickly identify new filings and recently deceased individuals.

About LexisNexis
LexisNexis® (www.lexisnexis.com) is a leading global provider of information and services solutions, including its flagship Web-based Lexis® and Nexis® research services, to a wide range of professionals in the legal, risk management, corporate, government, law enforcement, accounting and academic markets. A member of Reed Elsevier [NYSE: ENL; NYSE: RUK] (www.reedelsevier.com), LexisNexis serves customers in 100 countries with 15,000 employees worldwide.

About LexisNexis Risk Solutions
LexisNexis® Risk Solutions is the leader in providing essential information that helps advance industry and society. Building on the legacy of proven LexisNexis® services from the past 30 years, our cutting-edge technology, unique data and advanced scoring analytics provide total solutions that address evolving client needs in the risk sector while upholding high standards of security and privacy. LexisNexis Risk Solutions serves commercial organizations and government agencies and is comprised of several affiliated corporations, each offering premier customer-focused solutions. For more information, visit www.lexisnexis.com/risk.

Media Contact
Fiona McCaul
LexisNexis Risk Solutions
Phone: 678.694.3651
fiona.mccaul@lexisnexis.com

Posted by Mary Wisniewski, Collection Technology.net

Following constant change is no easy gig. And for the collections world, keeping up with bankruptcy updates is one particularly harsh headache, as events within a filing are fluid. Or to put it another way, the time requirement to comb through ever-changing court papers can be a beast.

LexisNexis wants to remove this collection research task through a newer offering, LexisNexis Banko Events Monitoring. In short, the product lets subscribers receive automated updates of events within a bankruptcy filing.

The product “stems from the whole fact that bankruptcy has caught people by surprise,” Rob Fite, vice president of collection solutions for LexisNexis Risk Solutions, says. “Reform was supposed to [slow] some of the bankruptcy filings.”

But it hasn’t. And Lexis believes that 2010 will continue to witness a slew of bankruptcies, and for collectors, the challenge is monitoring the changes within a bankruptcy. The new Lexis product aims to help, by offering to follow more than 500 events between opening and closing a bankruptcy.

“There are hundreds of things that happen between opening and closing [a bankruptcy],” says Linda Straub Jones, collections solutions product consultant at Lexis.

Creditors must react to some of these updates, she explains. Consider a motion to redeem, which helps debtors keep secured property. If a debtor has a $10,000 balance on an auto loan, he or she could file a motion to redeem, perhaps requesting to pay only half of the loan to keep the car and call it a day. However, Straub Jones says some debtors are taking advantage of this motion, and offering maybe only a $100 for the car, as an extreme example.

“It’s one of those in between things that a creditor needs to know immediately,” she says.

A user can choose how many bankruptcy events, and what events, he or she wants Lexis to monitor. In turn, Lexis will send its findings back to the user as fast as 24 hours, or batch it back weekly, or monthly, depending on the user’s preference.

The product launched in mid-January and has a “number” of early adopters, says Fite.

What’s next from Lexis? Launching within 60 days is a skip wizard, which will perform skips for users.

View Mary Wisniewski’s original posting at CollectionTechnology.net.

People and businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a staggering pace, with 1.4 million petitions submitted in 2009, an increase of 32% from the previous year. The number is likely to jump higher in 2010. Associated with each bankruptcy petition are a large number of smaller court motions an individual or business files related to assets such as business loans, mortgages or cars. Companies and debt collection organizations can benefit from real time updates on these events in their efforts to recover debt and reduce losses.

Currently, if an organization working to collect debt would like to learn about key events in an individual’s bankruptcy filing, it would access the individual or business’s court case docket and conduct various searches on different events within the bankruptcy case, paying a fee for each search conducted.

LexisNexis Receivables Management Solutions can automate this process and deliver an extensive set of information to corporations, mortgage companies and third-party collections agencies about noteworthy events that occur during the course of a bankruptcy filing to help them make better and faster decisions about debt recovery.

In a preliminary trial LexisNexis conducted of bankruptcy events monitoring services with four top-tier first party organizations, customers saved 50% or more in cost associated with bankruptcy related searches by using this new offering.

An example of a common bankruptcy event within the auto industry is “motion to redeem.” This is a process that a debtor can take to keep his or her car for an amount far lower than the amount owed on the loan. Rather than wait for the information about this to be sent via mail, the car loan company could receive the information far faster via LexisNexis and contact the court to make a counter offer with the debtor or object to the motion.

“LexisNexis currently offers the only comprehensive, automated set of bankruptcy events data that is also customizable depending on the needs of the debt collector,” said Rob Fite, vice president and general manager, LexisNexis Receivables Management Solutions. “Benefits to the customer include operational efficiency, saved time and cost, reduced loss exposure due to more timely information about notices of assets and redemptions and reduced losses from errors and omissions caused by manual processing.”

Timely, accurate and relevant information is power to the company seeking to recover debt during a time when bankruptcies are more and more commonplace. LexisNexis provides the information needed: every case, every event, every day.

For more information about LexisNexis® Banko® Events Monitoring, please contact 866.528.0780.