Email & Collection Notices - Will you be compliant, secure and effective?

Published on Tuesday, 16 February 2010 00:00

The use of email for the collection industry is new. It has been widely embraced in the first-party environment, providing substantial cost savings and enhaced account servicing. The collection industry and the American Collectors Association have been working with the FTC to make changes in the FDCPA to allow for debtor correspondence using email.

Demographic Information on Internet use is listed below.

Demographics of Internet Users

Below is the percentage of each group who use the internet, according to our September 2009 survey. As an example 76% of adult women use the internet.

Total Adults	77%
Men	78
Women	76
Race / ethnicity
White, Non-Hispanic	80%
Black, Non-Hispanic	72
Hispanic (English-Speaking)	61
Age
18-29	93%
30-49	83
50-64	77
65+	43
Household Income
Less than $30,000/yr	62%
$30,000-$49,999	84
$50,000-$74,999	93
$75,000+	95
Educational attainment
Less than High School	37%
High School	72
Some College	87
College +	94
Community type
Urban	73%
Suburban	75
Rural	71

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, August 18-September 14, 2009 Tracking Survey, N=2,253 adults, including 560 call phone interviews. Margin of error is +2%.

Dantom Systems selected Striata after performing extensive due-diligence on email solutions companies that would best support the customer needs and easily integrate into the intelligent Collection Letter (ICL7trade;) service. Striata is a recognized global leader in providing secure eNotic delivery solutions for some of the world’s largest financial service providers.

Components of Striata’s solution are:

• An encrypted PDF document attached to the eNotice communication conveniently delivered right to their inbox.
• The required resources to ensure inbox delivery with comprehensive mail status reporting for the biller/collection agency.

It is reported that between Yahoo, Google and AOL there are over 650,000,000 email addresses. Ensuring that emails are delivered is no small task when you consider that all majors ISPs and internet based email service providers are proactively working ro reduce spam and other unsolicited email traffic. As some agencies have learned, sending broadcast emails from your own facility can quickly get you black listed and make it difficult to send email at all.

As you look to integrate email into your debtor correspondence strategies keep in mind that your solutions must be

• Compliant
• Secure
• Effective

To learn more about DANTOM System’s eNotice solution, contact Dan Waldecker at 248-567-7300