ACA TOP COLLECTION MARKET SURVEY

For nearly 40 years, the ACA has surveyed member agencies and conducted the Top Collection Market Survey. This survey provides critical feedback to the collection industry. Information in the annual report generated includes annual dollar volume of gross collections and new business in the selected 12 month period, average balance, number of accounts placed, average age at time of placement, average percent of commission, recovery rates, and healthcare claims and formatting practices. This information is organized according to specific market of origination, such as cable TV, checks, child support, credit cards, clinic, property management, student loans, various utilities, veterinarians, etc. Forty different market segments were included in the 2003 Report.

Collecting this data can be time consuming for both the ACA and the agencies providing it. For this reason, the ACA created a Task Force to develop new methods to collect and compile the information. It was determined that the data could be extracted from the collection software systems. However, it would require the software vendors to develop programming to support the capture and reporting process.

Because of the importance of this survey, and to better serve our customers, TCM agreed to be one of the participating vendors in the Top Collection Market Survey. Debt$Net™ has already been modified to flag clients for inclusion in the report. For this, new fields were added to the Client screen on the MISC tab. Users wishing to participate in the survey can use these field to categorize clients according to the ACA’s definitions for market segment and service area.

The reporting component is being finalized. To support the ACA, an electronic report file will be generated and forwarded. You will also be able to print your own copy of the report.

The Top Collection Market Survey update will be provided to our users via a patch to Debt$Net™. Patches are available in accordance with your tech support agreement. It is only available to those Users on Release 6.9. For those of you using Release 6.9, at the “About Debt$Net” screen, hit the “Update” button, and you will receive the patch file over your internet connection.

Actual survey administration has been scheduled by the ACA for January 2007. We will keep our users informed as we progress on this critical project!

Instructions for entering the data and generating the report can be downloaded: TopMarketSurvey.pdf