With an ever increasing rise in home foreclosures, as well as personal and business bankruptcies, due to growing unemployment rates, more and more consumers are drowning in debt.

In addition to a job loss, other life circumstances, such as an illness or divorce, can cause delinquencies. Recovery from these unplanned situations can take up to two or three years.

Once the debtor finds employment or regains their health, they often seek to establish new credit, as well as pay off past due accounts. As they acquire new credit, older past due accounts can take a “back seat” to newly established credit.

Also, locating debtors can be a challenge, as many can relocate across state lines for work or family reasons. As these accounts become seriously delinquent, many are eventually turned over to collection agencies to try to recover.

Credit granters and business owners typically outsource their seriously past due accounts to collection agencies, because of their inability to collect them internally. Its also more cost effective to turn over these over to a collection agency.

It goes without saying that its very important to have processes in place that can alert or “trigger” creditors of changes in a debtor’s financial status. And these skip tracing processes need to be efficient enough to reach them quickly.

This ability to reach and locate debtors quickly is critical, before the money is spent elsewhere, since creditors and collection agencies are competing for the same limited funds.

How Collection Triggers Work in Locating Debtors

When a debtor applies for new credit, such as credit cards, auto loans, or finds work with a new employer, these new events, including updated address and telephone information “trigger” or alerts the collection agency of an improved financial status.

This fresh information is often sent within 24 hours of the trigger. Armed with this information, collectors can contact these people immediately, and this contributes greatly to the success of such a program.

Because this new information is “pushed” directly to the collection agency within 24 hours of the event, collectors gain the immediate advantage of new activity on the account, rather than having to manually check for changes to a debtor’s account for new address information or the ability to pay.

Collection agencies with this ability can be the first to contact the debtor to try to effect payment. As stated earlier, its crucial to be able to reach them before other creditors, or before the money is spent elsewhere.

Collection triggers can be a very effective tool for all stages of the debt collection process. Not only to be used for seriously delinquent accounts, but also for charged off accounts, judgments, as well as pre-charge off, early stage late accounts.

If you would like to know more about collection triggers and how this tool can greatly improve your debt recovery results, fill out the quote form below.

One of our consultants will contact you within 24-48 hours.