General News

PRA Group, one of the largest debt collection and debt-buying firms in the world, announced its third-quarter earnings yesterday and the numbers were lower than expected. The company earned $17.4 million in the third quarter, down from $51 million in the same period a year ago. Overall revenue was $229 million, …

The website for skiptracing company MasterFiles has been down for nearly 24 hours and phone calls trying to contact the corporate headquarters are not going through. Attempts to reach someone at the company to find out whether this was a temporary or permanent outage were not successful. If you know someone …

The sad fact about the collections business is, that when an agency is successful, it’s actually making itself obsolete. Most collection agencies are collecting on behalf of clients, from credit card companies to the local doctor’s office. And when those delinquent borrowers make their payments, the agency has to go …

At NARCA’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., last week, the two-year term of president Joann Needleman came to an end and the two-year term of Harvey Moore kicked off. Both spoke with AccountsRecovery.net about their tenures. For Needleman, her time as president will be remembered as ushering in what is …

Representatives from three states, a handful of regulatory agencies, and several industry participants will be the speakers at the Federal Trade Commission‘s final Debt Collection Dialogue event, to be held Nov. 18, in Atlanta. Among those representing the industry will be Harvey Moore, the new president of NARCA, Nick Jarman, …

About 5% of a sample group of 4.3 million consumers had a debt that was sold to a debt-buying company, according to a whitepaper recently issued by VantageScore. The whitepaper attempted to illustrate what would happen if those debts sold to debt-buyers, known as “sold-derogatory” tradelines, were removed from consumers’ credit scores. …

A long, but interesting feature was published yesterday about how the proliferation of collectors and creditors filing lawsuits to collect on unpaid debts is unfairly targeting black communities and borrowers. The article shares a number of personal stories from borrowers in suburbs of St. Louis, which provide context and background …

Urban Outfitters, the parent brand of retailers Anthropologie, Urban Outfitters and Free People, asked salary employees in its corporate headquarters to volunteer for six-hour shifts in a new fulfillment center to help get orders ready to be shipped. The shifts were for the last three weekends in October. Employees would be given …

I came across this article today — When the Debt Collector Poses as a Pizza Delivery Guy — which summarizes some of the activities used by Westlake Financial and its subsidiary, Wilshire Credit, in trying to get delinquent borrowers to pay. As the article states, the lenders would use alternate names on …

Evidence suggests that there are more and more collection agencies that are opting not to report delinquencies to the credit bureaus because of the liabilities associated with posting information inaccurately, according to a number of sources. There still does remain a cadre of agents who use credit reporting as an …