Improve Overdraft Program Performance
At Your Bank or Credit Union

As it relates to maximizing the potential of your bank or credit union's overdraft program, retaining your customers is key. While it can be very expensive to maintain contact with past due customers, encouraging them to resolve their past due accounts before they charge-off, its even more expensive to acquire new customers!

These factors make it crucial to manage the costs and time associated with collecting delinquent accounts. You don't want the income gained from a successful overdraft program to be lost due to excessive charge-offs. Fact is, its worth rescuing these accounts BEFORE they charge-off, as they can be very profitable to your institution.

However, one must go beyond sending the usual internal reminder letters and phone calls to be more effective in salvaging a significant percentage of pre-charge-off accounts.

Because of technological advances, such as call screening, caller ID, etc, customers have more tools at their disposal. They can simply ignore your calls.

While most suspended accounts can be successfully reinstated, more often than not, charge-offs result simply from an inability to communicate with customers.

Utilizing a customer retention strategy via a third party collection agency can be the perfect solution to increasing the performance of your overdraft program.

Effective pre-charge-off collections should:

• start collection efforts right after suspension of overdraft privileges, using diplomatic strategies to encourage pre-charge-off customers towards resolution;

• include timely and systematic written communications that remind customers of their overdrawn status, clear instructions to rectify outstanding obligations, as well as including language for negative credit reporting if directives are ignored;

• allows the institution to maintain ownership AND control of the accounts;

• make it an economical choice for the institution by keeping costs below 5% of recovered pre-charge-off dollars. This should be contrasted to internal efforts that tend to cost much more, when factoring in time, personnel, and other costs, while yielding marginal results.

• offers a zero-cost interface to mate with your institution's existing overdraft program's software.

If you're considering pre charge-off collections to help retain your valuable checking account customers before closing their accounts, and that will work seamlessly with your overdraft protection program, simply fill out the quote form below.

One of our consultants will be happy to discuss your options in more detail.

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