When Collection Software Runs, Debtors Can’t Hide
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WITH Americans taking on more and more debt, high-tech collection tactics are making it easier to find debtors and encourage them to pay up. Or else. Debt-collection software with names like the Sting, Optimizer and Determinator help collection agencies find elusive debtors, phone them and make a plan for them to pay off what they owe. Programs using artificial intelligence can gauge the likelihood that a debtor will pay up, and they can match debtors with collectors who fit their style. ”When you’re talking about the customary ways of thinking about how people buy and sell things with credit, the old paradigms are being outstripped by new technology,” said Ronald Griffin, a law professor who teaches a debtor-creditor relations course at Washburn University in Kansas. As of February, American consumers had amassed $1.3 trillion in outstanding installment debt, up 7 percent from the previous year, according to the Federal Reserve. In 1997, the most recent year for which data are available, debt totaling $247.4 billion was sent to collection agencies, which recovered $32.2 billion that year, according to the American Collectors Association, a 3,600-member trade group based in Minneapolis. More : query.nytimes.com |