State of the Debt Sales Market – CBA Webinar featuring TransUnion & EverChain

Evolving Creditor Strategies for Handling Non-Performing Loans.

Did you miss our live webinar? Watch as EverChain’s Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Wratten, and TransUnion’s Director of Financial Services, Javier Alvarado, discuss the ongoing challenges in the debt sales market and offer strategies to help creditors with Non-Performing Loans.

CBA Webinar Transcript

ISABELLA

The Consumer Bankers Association is pleased to welcome you to today’s webinar, The State of the Debt Sales Market: Evolving Creditor Strategies for Handling Non-Performing Loans presented by EverChain.

My name is Isabella, and it is my pleasure to facilitate today’s event. Thank you for joining.

This presentation will last up to 60 minutes and will include Q and A opportunities at the end. You may submit a question at any time by entering the questions into the Q and A box at the bottom of your screen.

As a reminder, the views expressed in this webinar are those of the presenters and do not represent the views of CPA or its members.

Disclaimer, this information is not intended to be legal advice and may not be used as legal advice. Legal advice must be tailored to the specific circumstances of each case. Any opinions expressed are the opinions of the speaker and not their organization.

Today, we’re talking about The State of the Debt Sales Market. Default rates are rising with the tsunami of consumer delinquency. How’s the industry preparing? Let’s talk about how smart our creditors are handling this wave. It’s my pleasure to introduce today’s speakers, Matthew Wrattan and Javier Alvarado.

Matthew is CEO of EverChain, the leading debt sales brokerage founded in 2012. The EverChain platform allows for the efficient transaction of non-performing loans and the compliant management of receivables. Javier is the Director of Financial Services at TransUnion, a Global Information Insights company that makes trust possible in global commerce.

Matthew, Javier. Welcome.

MATTHEW

Thank you so much for that introduction, Isabella and hello, Javier, it’s great to share the virtual stage with you. We asked Javier to join us today as we believe that TransUnion has some really valuable information to share with each of you. So, we’re going to get started there. All right, over to you Javier.

JAVIER

Thank you, Matthew, and thank you to Isabella and the Consumer Bankers Association. It’s a pleasure to be with all of you today. Matthew, as we were discussing this webinar, this is a direct result of the voice of the customer. As you and I interact with thousands of financial institutions, the same two themes or questions come up: Firstly, where is all of this coming from? Secondly, what are creditors and lenders doing with it? Let’s get started and look behind door number one.

Macroeconomic Update

Consumer spending, no surprise, powered another solid quarter. GDP growth of 2.3% in the second quarter exceeded the 2% estimate. And that 2.3% growth is up from the 1.1%, GDP growth that we saw in the first quarter of this year. So, this increase is fueling an emerging consensus that the economic slowdown is possibly delayed – again. That downturn may start in the fourth quarter of this year or possibly even the first quarter of 2024.

A year ago, inflation was about 8.5%. In the first quarter of this year, it was around 5%. And now the current inflation rate in the second quarter of this year is around 3.2%. Now, inflation is cooling — we all see that, but it remains very sticky, and clearly above the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2% inflation. Recent sound bites from the Federal Reserve suggest that interest rates may remain at current levels. However, only time will tell if additional rate hikes will be pursued.

What do these trends mean in the economy? What do they mean for consumer trends in credit and lending? Let’s take a look at that. Some of these slides are from the TransUnion Consumer Credit Database, other slides are from the Federal Reserve, so please keep that in mind.

Credit Market Overview

Creditors and lenders put a big squeeze on originations as you can see. Looking at the month of May, across products, year-over-year growth was down almost 7% in auto lending. For bank cards, it was down a little bit more than 5%.

If we look at home products, we can see the effect of higher interest rates it’s having. Very noticeable in the growth of HELOC originations, down almost 30%. Mortgage origination growth was down almost 39%. Private label originations are also down, but they are recovering, and we can see that unsecured personal loans, while down this February, March, and April, are also rebounding. I skipped over student loans — we did see a blip in February, an increase year over year growth, but again, it did return down and we’re seeing a steady 3% decline in student loan originations growth year over year.

Consumer spending has remained very strong. The black line on this chart represents the number of consumers, in millions, with a loan balance. In 2018, if you look at the first bar on the far left and the line on the far left, there were around 239 million consumers with outstanding balances through this year. In the second quarter, that number is up to about 253 million. So, an increase of about 14 million or about 5.5%.

Now, if we look at the blue bars, we can see that total outstanding balances have had a different experience. Yes, they have increased, but if you look at the balances in the second quarter of 2018, a little north of $13 trillion. Now, as of the second quarter of this year, total outstanding balances are up to $17 trillion. That’s an increase of almost 23%. So from 2018 through 2020, roughly those two years, and roughly to when the pandemic started, we saw an increase of about a trillion dollars from $13 trillion to $14 trillion. And since 2020, total outstanding balances have grown $3 trillion, from a little over $14 trillion to now $17 trillion.

Consumer Debt Rising

Inflation has made the same basket of goods more expensive for all of us. If you break down the balances by product, on this slide from the Federal Reserve, we can see in this chart steady increases in household debt for all products, especially for mortgages.

Regarding disposable income, there’s a spike in the second quarter of 2020, then a similar spike in the first quarter of 2021. Those spikes align closely with the Federal stimulus programs where consumers received some influx of liquidity. After the pandemic started, you can see the red vertical line there in the first quarter of 2020, we saw a spike in the disposable personal income, and then again, another spike in the first quarter of 2021, again, roughly aligning with the federal stimulus packages.

Now we have additional charts about different products in the market.

MATTHEW

Yes, Javier, I was actually preparing to say today that student loan payments would be returning, so people need to prepare for the payment hierarchy change. But as we can see, the White House is looking to delay repayment for some consumers. We’d encourage everyone to stay tuned on that one.

JAVIER

I would add that there are borrowers out there with private student loans. It’s very important to see how those consumers may change their payment hierarchy in the coming months.

MATTHEW

Here, we see that credit card consumption is up 11% from Q4 2019, the period before the pandemic, and it continues despite the Fed’s best attempts to curb inflation.

JAVIER

Absolutely agree 100%.

And by popular demand, we do have another section in this presentation for credit cards, which we’ll dive into in a few minutes. But then let’s move on to auto loans.

Matthew, I can relate to this slide because I was in the auto purchasing market recently. I also helped one of my kids through the same process. I can tell you inventories are very low, demand is unchanged, and so when you intersect the supply and demand curves, they’re obviously pointing to higher prices. When the buyer doesn’t have negotiating power, it’s going to lead to higher prices. We hope that inventory levels return to normal, but as of yet, we don’t have any solid information about that.

MATTHEW

So it’s interesting, cash out refinance, along with the stimulus created a short-term increase in disposable income through that period in the middle.

JAVIER

That’s right. Similar story here, Matthew. The low inventory during the pandemic and good demand from consumers and home buyers, tempered by higher interest rates, are leading to higher debt balances. I can tell you personally that here in Florida, the real estate market never slowed down. Very heated, and on fire, and until the inventory returns, we’re still going to see higher balances and higher price points.

MATTHEW

This “Other consumer financing” slide is an interesting one because it demonstrates a major increase in the use of alternative finance. A few slides ago, we were looking at credit card debt being up 11% from the period prior to the pandemic. But when we look at alternative finance, it’s up 21% from that same period. We’re up from $432 billion to $527 billion, almost double that of credit card debt.

The “swim down” is happening. Consumers’ credit scores are dropping with each delinquency, leading them to alternative finance options, some of which are non-credit reporting. Debt collectors need to prepare to see more supply from alternative finance lenders, such as retail loans and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). If you’re not prepared, get prepared for this increase in supply from that asset class.

JAVIER

That is right. So, higher loan balances mean higher minimum payments across all consumers and across all risk tiers. Beginning with the subprime on the left, near prime and then prime, you can see that every single risk here is seeing an increase in payments and we expect that to continue.

MATTHEW

I think as debt levels rise, we’re going to continue to see minimum payments decrease, and I don’t think that’s a surprise for many.

JAVIER

That’s right. And we do see some cyclical spikes here on this graph. Normally pre-holiday season, end of year, we see some drops and minimum payments as consumers use cash on hand for holiday spending. But then we do see excess payments or as we call them, aggregated excess payments, taking hold here. Again, aligned with some of the federal stimulus over the last couple of years, we can see that in the second quarter of 2020, there was a spike as we believe consumers deleveraged, using some of that extra liquidity to deleverage. And then also early in 2021, as another stimulus package went out, consumers decided to deleverage.

There have been steady declines, however, since early 2022, and we don’t see that trend changing. This adds to the hypothesis that there is a serious liquidity and cash crunch among millions of consumers.

MATTHEW

As consumers meet max credit lines or find themselves unable to access credit cards, we expect to see a rise in the use of alternative finance. What is also interesting to me is seeing the higher demands from consumers with higher FICO scores for subprime alternative loans, and we expect to see a continued swim down to subprime products.

Now low unemployment, it’s the silver lining. Job growth continues to exceed expectations. However, I encourage everyone to keep a close eye on the unemployment rate, because if that bursts, it’s a whole different ball game.

When we look at this slide, you may ask why the savings rate suddenly went up in Q1 of 2020. Well, as you can see, and as many know, it’s due to the three major stimulus payments. However, now we can see that the savings have dropped to half of what they were before the pandemic, which is of course very alarming.

JAVIER

Yes, it is. And Matthew, as we’ve discussed with higher prices, increased usage, and higher balances, there’s no surprise that delinquency levels have trended higher, especially over the last year.

MATTHEW

Yes, Javier. So steady, steady increases across the board.

We see credit card and unsecured personal loans appearing to have a modest decline in serious delinquency from April through July. But if you look at the data, this is partly due to tax season leading to consumers having extra cash to pay those obligations, and then also lower originations from those asset classes.

JAVIER

That’s right, and like you mentioned earlier, it’s the strength of the job market that’s helped limit the rise in delinquency rates across products.

Higher Charge-Off Volume

So as a result, higher delinquency rates have led to higher charge-offs. in 2019, there was a decrease in the first three quarters as you can see here, with that black line running across the first three blue bars. Then a bump in the fourth quarter. Matthew. What’s, what’s your opinion on that?

MATTHEW

Pay attention to Q4 of 2019, pre-pandemic. What’s interesting to me is that the charge-off volume isn’t very different from now to then. From where I’m sitting, at least it appears that the pandemic and all that came from government stimulus may have delayed the inevitable recession. Remember from earlier, the average savings are now half what they were pre-pandemic and delinquencies are on the rise, up 5% from the same period. So that is a real cause for concern and reflection for all of you listening.

Foreclosures and Bankruptcies

JAVIER

Agreed. Now we’re going to look at foreclosures and bankruptcies. Seeing the mortgage balances and how they’ve increased, you can see how the levels of foreclosures and bankruptcies have also increased. In the second quarter of 2020, the courts closed because of the pandemic. But then they started to slowly reopen, and I think creditors and lenders were taking their time to return to legal strategies—some because of forbearance, some because of wanting to really take care of their customers. What do you think, Matthew?

MATTHEW

With interest rates being so low, credit consolidation was viable for most Americans. As interest rates started to rise in Q1 of 2022, that’s when we started to see foreclosures and bankruptcies start to climb. So I think there’s a tipping point when the consumer can’t refinance anymore. They have to turn to options like bankruptcy or even credit consolidation.

JAVIER

We’re seeing a rise, an increase in both of those for sure.

MATTHEW

With debt sales pricing, pay attention to the relative pricing line here at the top. Prior to the pandemic, from what we can see in this chart, the final quarters of 2019 did see a steady decrease in pricing as liquidations began to fall. However, this was intensified in March 2020 as debt buyers began to renegotiate their purchase rates due to the declining liquidations. But then this was worsened by their investors forcing many buyers to drop their rates, or drop out of bidding altogether, mainly as a result of uncertainty and fear that their investors had with the possibility of a global pandemic.

Now in Q2 of 2020, interestingly, pricing begins to climb, and this is due to a massive decline in charge-off volumes as we can see in the blue bars. And as a result, demand drove prices up in the vacuum of availability. Also, pandemic-related income sources (like the stimulus) led to consumers having more disposable income, and early on, little to nowhere to spend it. As a result, they actually paid down debt. They also didn’t need to originate new loans. So, the increase in liquidation and the decrease in volume kept us seeing rising prices through Q 1 2022.

It’s really important for all the creditors listening to remember that a debt buyer pays what can be collected inclusive of their margin. So when the collection rates drop, as you can imagine they will when consumers’ disposable income drops, buyers will need to pay less. Debt sale prices absolutely mirror liquidation, which we can see from Q1 2022 through Q2 2023. So it’s important to note that as you see decreasing debt sale prices, you don’t panic and change your strategy—the impact that’s driving down those debt sale prices is the same impact driving down liquidations. So there’s nowhere to hide from this reality.

Sale prices reflect liquidity, and ultimately, a professional debt-buying collector will out-collect the lender 99% of the time. Not to mention that a lender can reinvest the return from the debt sale and outperform the debt buyer’s annuity over the same period of time. So, selling debt is mathematically encouraged.

The moral of this is: don’t panic. As long as you have every compliant interested debt buyer bidding on your product, you will have the highest market rate. And this is why it’s important that you see the entire market, not just a couple of bids from a couple of buyers. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet, Javier. But maximum demand, and a serious focus on post-sale compliance, are the keys to a successful debt sale.

JAVIER

Fantastic. By popular demand, we’re going to take a closer look at the Bankcard market.

Originations have declined from their all-time highs, but they remain elevated, if we look back to the early 2000s, we can see that there were several dips: the Great Recession, the Recovery, then the start of the pandemic, where the lenders and creditors put a squeeze on their originations. And then we’ve seen a comeback. So as you can see here, levels of bankcard originations are above what they were in the early 2000s, and far above what they were during the pandemic.

Bankcard balances are also at an all-time high. We did have some spikes, again pre-Great Recession, then we had a downturn as consumers and originators both tightened their wallets and their belts. Then we’ve had a steady increase since then all the way through the beginning of the pandemic. As we got into unknown territory early in the pandemic, you can see that balance has decreased, as Federal stimulus aid went out to the country to millions of consumers, we believe that they use the extra liquidity to pay down their balances.

But then consumption has resumed in what we can call the post-pandemic era. Balances for Q2 of this year were at $962 billion. We have more recent data, and now that number is above $1 Trillion for total credit card account balances. So consumption remains very strong.

Credit Card Delinquencies Rising

As balances increase, we normally expect delinquencies to also rise, and it’s no surprise as we look at the different tranches of delinquencies, 30 days past due in blue, 60 days past due in yellow, and 90 days past due in red.

As you can see, we’ve gone through some similar cycles through the Great Recession. Then we had a downturn; a decrease in delinquency rates as the country recovered into the COVID era. We saw a decrease in delinquencies across these three buckets, but now we’re seeing the normalization of those delinquency rates across all three tranches of business (30/60/90 days past due).

Credit Card Charge-Off Volume and Balances

Now, increases in balances lead to increases in delinquencies. Rising delinquencies will lead to increases in total charge-off volumes.

Beginning in the first quarter of 2019, the charge-off balances in billions were around $9.1 billion per quarter. Now in Q2 of 2023, that figure is up to $11 billion for the quarter. Also, the charge-off volumes have returned and surpassed the peak established late last year.

So a few years ago, early 2019, there were 3.3 million accounts entering charge-off in this last quarter. In the second quarter of 2023, we’ve seen a significant increase to almost 4.5 million accounts entering charge-off status.

Best Practices in Debt Sales

We’ve talked about the challenges in the industry, where the debt is coming from, and consumer spending, where consumption is very strong. The silver lining, as Matt mentioned, is unemployment. Unemployment is low, relatively speaking, and we will keep a close eye on those metrics on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis.

One of the asks from our customers and participants was to offer up some strategies for all of you based on our interaction with thousands of financial institutions. I’ll start by saying that you need to be proactive when you’re looking at pre-delinquency processes or early-stage delinquencies. In order to avoid charge-offs, start by being proactive. Know your customer. Look at any emerging patterns in their payment history and recognize the quality of the credit that they’re supporting. Then also look at the overall health of your portfolio by performing regular portfolio reviews.

Secondly, when it comes to data, do your research, please prioritize data quality over quantity. Matthew, you know the days of buying truckloads of data, receiving that data, and trying to make sense of it? Those days are over, you have to be really specific about the data that you want to consume for your organization. And that is important for compliance because we work in a very heavily regulated industry, and it’s also important for recovery.

Then thirdly, prioritize your resources for efficiency, and efficacy, by identifying key behaviors. You can fine-tune your treatment strategies, early delinquency, pre-delinquency, and then severe delinquency by identifying accounts that will most likely cure. You can improve your customer retention, loyalty, and ultimately your profitability.

MATTHEW

And you need to create a recurring strategy that includes pre-sale collections but also finishes with a debt sale. Because what’s critical to your overall return is selling before the point of diminishing return.

JAVIER

Right.

Strategies for High-Risk Debt Management

MATTHEW

As we look at strategies for debt management, one concern I have is the flood of creditors who are now considering selling debt. It’s great for the industry and it’s great for them. But it’s important to note that all debt brokers are not created equally. It’s important to have a debt broker partner for the life of every account you sell. It’s not finished at the point that the transaction ends. But that relationship and partnership extends beyond that debt sale.

Selling debt isn’t complete when you receive the funds, you need to have control. Post-sale to manage and oversee compliance.

Selling debt is the easiest part of this process. Compliance is the challenge, and your strategy must include 3rd and 4th party oversight, with the third being the buyer, and the fourth being the collection agencies to which the buyer will assign those accounts.

With EverChain, creditors have access to our unparalleled technology, along with our experienced debt sales compliance and post-sale teams. We ensure complete control over every account sold long after the sale ends. And today, this kind of oversight is only possible with EverChain. Being prepared for post-sale activity and compliance is often forgotten, and it’s critical if you plan to comply with the CFPB’s larger market participant rule.

The moral of the story is you have to consider selling to maximize your bottom line. But you need to look for an experienced and capable partner to guide you through the debt sale and post-sale. To protect your consumers and your company’s valuable brand, it comes down to the partner that you choose.

I’ll finish by saying that over the last 12 years, founding this company, and being a part of this journey has truly been an incredible experience for me personally. To be in financial services and to be able to do something that’s changing the way things are being done for as many as 80 million American consumers is really an incredible feeling.

We have invested millions of dollars in technology so that creditors can overcome some of the onerous and sometimes very risky steps in a debt sale. I’ll give you an example, a simple one that surprised me when I came into the industry: the masking of data. Today, some in the industry still provide unmasked debt sales files for the purpose of bidding. This is a real issue because this is real consumer data. This data should only be seen by you, the seller (the creditor), and the eventual buyer. So I would encourage everyone to stop taking a risk with your consumer’s PII and your company’s valuable brand.

Thank you everyone for your time today. And thank you, Javier. I look forward to taking some questions.

ISABELLA

Hi, Javier. Hey Matthew, thank you very much. That was great.

We have a couple questions here. The first question is: “Why should I work with a broker if I’m already working with a couple of buyers?”

MATTHEW

Because those couple of buyers are probably in our network, in other brokers’ networks, and you want to have as many buyers bidding on your portfolio as possible. I think if you have two, can you really say that’s a marketplace? You want to have double digits (10, 11, 12 buyers) if you can. If you can’t, if you’re in a sector that maybe only has eight or nine, let’s make sure that all eight or nine are reviewing your portfolio and offering you bids, because then you’re able to see the range that those eight buyers have, and you can decide how you want to move forward. But as long as they are compliant buyers, the more the merrier.

Risks in Debt Sales: Post-Sale is Critical

ISABELLA

I have another question here: “Why should I be concerned about post-sale?”

MATTHEW

When you think about a transaction and the length it takes, I know some folks say it can take up to two months. Generally, we see a transaction closing from start to finish in 18 days. But then you have another 1,000 days or longer, depending on which state you’re collecting in, that the collections are going to occur. So creditors have spent all that time doing due diligence on the debt buyer, they’ve looked over their compliance management system, and they feel comfortable about all of that.

But some creditors don’t sell debt today, and they say it’s due to the risk. But the irony is that they place with a third-party collection agency once their internal curing has ended, the debt buyer does the same. So when you look at Post-sale, if a buyer and a creditor are working together, that creditor only knows what that debt buyer is doing on their paper.

For example, if you’re working with EverChain, then you’re able to see how that buyer is performing, not just on your paper but on your peers and that’s important to understand. Where’s the complaint ratio? How are they handling consumer communication? Because the highest price isn’t always the best outcome, and you tend to learn that in post-sale; you’ve sold it, you feel good about the price, but then suddenly, you have to buy back accounts. You have to deal with various post-sale issues.

You’re struggling to be able to find due diligence and compliance materials for an agency that’s worked with a debt buyer maybe two years after the transaction. So post-sale is critical, technology is critical, experience is critical. And when you put all that together, you really will have complete control over your post-sale, and you’ll be able to take advantage of selling debt at the e point of diminishing return.

JAVIER

It’s super important to make sure that your liability is minimized. And I agree with you about the PII data – it’s very risky. We’re in a very heavily regulated industry, and the more you can mitigate the sharing of that PII data, the better off you will be.

MATTHEW

I heard somebody say something once that you wouldn’t leave your server door open for a few minutes, would you? You just wouldn’t. It’s a very secure place, and the reason it’s secure is because that’s where your IP and your PII sits on the servers. But when you release an unmasked sale file, it’s almost as if you’ve just let that door swing open and stay open for a few minutes. So again, it can be done.

We’ve been in business for 12 years and we’ve never facilitated a sale of debt by sharing unmasked data. The only people who see the unmasked data are the seller and the original buyer and I think that’s really important. I think the industry needs to see that change across the board to protect consumers’ data.

ISABELLA

We have a couple more questions. “What can creditors do to maximize selling price in this environment?”

MATTHEW

One of the features that we’ve added recently is the Creditor Partnership Score. When we first got into this, we thought that it was the debt buyers that we needed to work with and work on and help to create a better environment and a better partnership, but what we learned over the last decade is that it really is about the overall partnership, and making sure that documentation is ready at the point of sale – or readily available in the event that it isn’t.

Making sure that you’re a good post-sale partner for the buyer is also very important. If all the data is there and you’re a solid partner, then not only are they going to be interested in paying you a maximum price, but they’re going to come back to bid, to be a part of the marketplace, and to continue to purchase your accounts. Javier?

JAVIER

I would say that it’s important to understand, pre-sale, what’s in the portfolio you want to sell. You want bids. There are important searches that you can perform, that will uncover consumers that may be in active military service, that may be in bankruptcy, that may be deceased or incarcerated, or generally unavailable to conduct business with the creditor or lender. So I think those pre-sales scrubs are important as well.

MATTHEW

I agree, and one of the things that we’ve experienced over time and again, is that technology is a beautiful thing, especially when it’s utilized correctly. We’ve decided from the very beginning to provide, at no cost, a presales scrub. I think it’s important the creditors do that scrub, but let’s make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Let’s make sure that there are no unnecessary putbacks. So essentially, we’re going to perform that scrub, as well to ensure that that’s handled, and then we’re going to perform the scrub again before we move towards funding, because it’s critical to reduce post-sale noise and unnecessary post-sale activity.

Another thing that comes to mind that I think is important to share is that creditors do everything they can to prepare for debt sale, but mistakes get made and I can tell you that I have seen this mistake made quite a few times, not a lot of times, I don’t want to create panic, but what I’ve seen is where creditors will actually facilitate the sale of loans that they’ve sold before, and that might seem like a shock like how could that possibly happen? Well, rest assured we have a system of record built into our system; we have chain of title and chain of assignment.

So I can think of the last example where a creditor reached out to us and said 600 accounts were missing from their sale file. We looked at the report and the report showed that those 600 accounts have been sold by that creditor before. The system essentially prevented that from happening. Now, let’s just imagine what would have happened. Imagine that it was a different debt buyer, and those accounts went to different collection agencies. That’s why it’s so incredibly important to work with somebody who’s invested in technology and to work with somebody who is a partner long after the transaction and the funds have come into the creditor’s account.

ISABELLA

I have another question here: “What data or metrics are most important to a buyer when considering bidding or buying a portfolio for sale?”

JAVIER

To a creditor, there are times when a portfolio is sprinkled with accounts that need specialized treatment efforts. So it’s important to identify those accounts (those consumers) upfront so that you understand what you’re getting yourself into.

So we recommend a handful of searches or scrubs pre-purchase: bankruptcies, deceased, active military, litigious consumers, and incarceration, very important in the debt buying and selling market.

MATTHEW

Through our partnership, Javier, we’ve been able to obviously provide debt buyers with access to that information without having to see the unmasked data. Debt buyers will tell creditors that “we can’t pull that information if we don’t have that unmasked data”. But thankfully through our partnership, we’re able to provide that insight to a debt buyer to value and understand the difference between each consumer loan that’s in the portfolio, to be able to get the valuation right and to understand how they’re going to work those accounts once those accounts are purchased. Because as you said, there are differences, and those differences need to be understood. Those consumers need to be routed through different paths to result in successful and compliant recovery.

JAVIER

Right. Compliance is paramount now more than ever.

ISABELLA

I have one last question for you guys here: “When do you see debt prices increasing?”

MATTHEW

That’s anyone’s guess. We hope to see unemployment rates stay where they are; we hope to start to see some light here as we start to move through this. We’re going to see debt sale prices rise when we see liquidation rise. And creditors are working their accounts before they outsource them; before they sell them. So pay attention to that, and again, pay special attention to the unemployment rate, because if that bursts, we’ll be having a different conversation or another webinar because we’ll be having a different conversation entirely!

JAVIER

Well said.

ISABELLA

All right. That’s all for questions. Is there anywhere we can reach you guys in case anyone has any outstanding questions, or

MATTHEW

Yes, we can follow up with an email to attendees. I’ve enjoyed this with you tremendously. Look for EverChain on Linkedin, and for Matthew Wratten. Also, we’ll pull a list of the attendees and work with Isabella to get an email out to you with our contact information so you can follow up afterward. Thank you!

ISABELLA

Thank you so much, Matthew and Javier. It was great hosting you both. Thank you so much to all of our participants today. This State of the Debt Sales Market session has been recorded and will be available within 1 to 2 business days. On behalf of the Consumer Bankers Association, thank you to everyone, have a great afternoon.

About EverChain®

EverChain® facilitates compliant and secure debt sales for lenders and other creditors. We enable creditors to manage and monetize their uncollected receivables via our secure, sophisticated, and specialized technology platform (patent pending) consistently and compliantly. We aren’t simply a conventional broker or a buyer; EverChain® is an experienced debt sales advisor who has the expertise to help creditors optimize their recovery strategy while protecting their consumers, brand, and bottom line. One of the prime focuses of our business is to optimize compliance across all entities, including sellers, buyers, law firms, and agencies.

Want to learn more about debt sales? Be sure to check out EverChain’s blog here. If you’re ready to schedule your free demonstration with one of our dynamic debt sales experts, please click here.