Direct Repossession vs Forwarding - Price vs Cost

Repossession Forwarding – Price vs Cost

Newspapers and TV crews love to tell stories about Repo Men, but the stories I’m seeing lately seem to be more about the Forwarding Industry than the Repossession Industry.

FROM USA TODAY 2/29/2009

Violence up between Repo Men, Car Owners

HALSELL, Ala. (AP) — Alone in his mobile home off a winding dirt road, Jimmy Tanks heard a commotion at 2:30 a.m. just outside his bedroom window: Somebody was messing with his car. The 67-year-old railroad retiree grabbed a gun, walked out the back door and confronted not a thief but a repo man and two helpers trying to tow off the Chrysler Sebring. Shots were fired, and Tanks wound up dead, a bullet in his chest.

The man who came to repossess the car, Kenneth Alvin Smith, is awaiting trial on a murder charge in a state considered a Wild West territory even by the standards of an industry that's largely unregulated nationally. Since Tanks' death last June, two other repo men from the same company Smith worked for were shot, one fatally.

Smith worked out of Birmingham with XXXXXXX Recovery (Repo agency) , a subsidiary of the Chicago-based XXXXXX Services (Forwarding Company). The same recovery firm employed a repo man who was shot and killed on Jan. 8 in Birmingham, as well as a third worker who was wounded while towing a vehicle in the city on Feb. 10.

I removed the name of the Repo Company and the Forwarding Company that hired them because my point is not to bad mouth a specific company, but to make a point about the state of the Forwarding Industry.

Before I do that, let me give you a little bit of history. I know a little bit about the “Forwarding Industry”. I started a company in 1994 called American Recovery Services, or ARS, as it’s known in the industry. It was one of, if not the first large volume Forwarding Companies, handling upwards of 50,000 assignments for repossession a year in the mid to late 90s.

We started it by accident. We had formed one of the first Skip Tracing companies that exclusively serviced the auto finance industry in 1988; Skipbusters. By the early 90s, we had several hundred Repossession Companies across the United States under contract to repossess the cars we located on the skip accounts we worked for large financial institutions.

One of our clients was VW Credit, and ironically, I had been one of the first VW Credit employees back in the early 80s when they first started financing cars in the US. VW had hired Chrysler Credit to manage the finance and collection process, and I was a Chrysler employee. By 1994, VW had split from Chrysler and they had gone out on their own, and I had done the same.
I’d landed VW as a client at the first repossession company I had started in 1990 with my wife and a business partner; Crown Recovery Services in L.A. By early 94, we’d sold our half of Crown and we’d started River City Auto Recovery at several locations in Northern California. We were doing all of VW’s repossessions in Northern California, and we were also were handling several hundred skips a month through Skipbusters.

While visiting VW’s HQ they asked us if we would be interested in managing their repossession process through our nationwide network. We did some research and formed ARS within a few weeks. We never called it “Forwarding”, in fact, we never even gave it a name other than ARS. By the late 90s, all the national auction houses had jumped in and started similar companies, and even Manheim got back into the business with their acquisition of ADT in 2000, even though in 1994 when I first started researching the formation of ARS, they told me they tried it a few years earlier on a small scale and almost immediately got out because it was just too difficult a business to manage. Interestingly, I heard last week they were recently sold to XXXX Forwarding company, probably a smart move on Manheim’s account, if they got a good price and didn’t have to guarantee revenue. It’s tough to run a successful Repossession company, and running a successful Forwarding company is even more challenging, in my opinion.

So yes, I know a little bit about the Forwarding Industry, and what I’ve seen recently is not something I’m proud of when my name is mentioned as a pioneer of this industry.

Here’s another recent, similar story:

From NBC Augusta, GA. 4/13/2009

Repo Man wanted for murder of Augusta Man

MARTINEZ, Ga. - A vehicle repossession turned deadly. The man called his lender to have his vehicle voluntarily repossessed. "As the reposessor was attempting to leave with the truck, he was causing damage to Mr. Jacob's vehicle, it was a van," said Captain Steve Morris with the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.

"When the truck came forward, he hit me. I was able to push off and get out of the way," said the man. His friend of 20 years, William Jacobs, wasn't as lucky.

"They went diagonally across my front yard and I saw Bill falling and I saw the guy turn and he ran over him...and he never slowed down," said the man. Jacobs was taken to the hospital, where he died.

Now the couple who hit and killed him is on the run and wanted for murder.

Columbia County investigators are working with the repo company, (XXXXXX Forwarding Company) and XXXX (Tow Company) to help find XXXXX and XXXXXXX.

And here is another one…

Tow Truck Driver Arrested, Charged With Hit And Run

By RNW Staff Writer Hayden Jennings • on June 15, 2009 (Rome, GA.)

Police arrested a local tow truck driver for felony hit and run after he ran allegedly ran over a woman in what police are calling a car repo gone wrong. Residents began giving the driver problems after he failed to produce any paperwork dictating the repo. As the situation continued to escalate, the driver reportedly brandished a hand gun and jumped into the wrecker. At that time the victim, Tina Ferguson, 41, of the same address, walked in front of the wrecker and was struck by the front bumper. The collision sent Ferguson into a barrel roll beside the truck before she rolled under it and was struck by the rear wheels as the wrecker left the scene.

The common denominator is the unprofessional and downright criminal actions of the repossession agents in question. The other common denominator is the fact that most, if not all of these accounts were assigned by the finance company to a company they trusted to handle the management of the repossession process for them, i.e. Forwarding.

In 1994, I believed Forwarding was a good idea, and even today, it still makes sense for some clients who struggle with the repossession management process. The problem is that like everything else, costs of doing business have gone up, and as a result, many forwarding companies are lowering the rates they are willing to pay the repo agent in the field to make sure they can make their needed, or desired margins. I’ve heard some repo companies offering their prospective agents $225 or $250 a repossession, and half that on a voluntary, which very well may be why there are two towing companies mentioned in the stories above.

If you wanted to get Lasix surgery on your eyes, would you hire someone who doesn’t use the best equipment, isn’t licensed, or doesn’t have a successful track record with solid references? Repossessing a car isn’t performing surgery on someone’s eyes, but if I own a finance company and I know what I have learned in the nearly thirty years I’ve spent in this industry, I’m not hiring a tow truck driver to pick up a voluntary just because he will do it for less than a qualified repossessor. I’m also not hiring the cheapest repo guy in town unless I’ve made damn sure he is also the best in town, and those two denominators do not usually mix.

I believe Forwarding companies hire these second class repo and tow jockeys because the deal they cut with the finance company is based more on price than it is on results. They also do this because the finance company doesn’t hold them accountable unless a serious problem arises, and the finance company doesn’t perform the due diligence they should be doing before they give them their first assignment. If they did, many of these Forwarding companies wouldn’t pass the test, and then the one’s who do Forwarding would only be able to perform the services at a certain rate, because otherwise they would go out of business as it’s not inexpensive to properly run a legitimate Forwarding business, Skip Tracing Agency, or Repossession Agency for that matter. The Finance Company would also make sure they knew exactly who the repossession company was contracting with, and instead of not wanting to know, they would demand to know not only who their approved agents are, they would audit them and ask to see the contracts, their insurance policies and the endorsements naking the Forwarding company, and they would perform an acid test on their Forwarding companies policies, procedures and practices to insure that an assignment to a sub-standard repossession agency, or an unlicensed or unqualified tow company would never happen on one of their assignments.

Since I started in this industry in 1982, most clients I’ve known have been focused on getting their repossessions performed for a lower price. I was trained this way at Chrysler. Once I started my first repossession company, I started to see the other side of the picture. Through the years, I’ve built relationships with a few forward thinking clients who have allowed us to charge a fair fee that could be evaluated and renegotiated as we delivered or exceeded their desired results. As I’m building Find John Doe, I’m trying to work with clients who think this way, and I applaud the vendors we do work with who hold their companies to the same core business values. If a client asks us to perform a skip locate for less than our normal rate, I tell them that I just can’t do it as I’ve built an organization that produces results, and we have a level of expected results we have to meet or we would go out of business. Lowering our revenue by even a few dollars makes it that much harder to meet our expectations, and our employees expectations. We work from a results-driven fee basis. If we don’t find people and get the collateral recovered, we make no money. This means I have to build an organization that finds people, or at least enough people to make up for the one’s I don’t find.

Many repo agents say contingency is bad, and while I agree to some degree, it is the way our industry has been built. It will take a long time and some forward thinking clients to make a change. I believe if the repossession fee is high enough to cover the accounts that are not repossessed, and if there is a secondary fee that can be generated for the agent who gets out of his truck and generates a positive resolution, and most importantly, if the repossession company gets a positive resolution on a majority of the accounts they receive, they can make a profit. If they spread themselves too thin and try and cover too large a service area, the chances of making a profit are reduced. If they take on more work than they can handle, the chances of making a profit and building lasting client relationships are reduced. Based on my experience, I’m confident that if the agents we contract with can track their results and build relationships with our company based on results and trust, they can grow a solid business.

The only problem with this is there are times when our industry makes no sense, and then it’s almost as if we have to start all over again in trying to legitimize what we do. A typical example of this is when a client assigns an account for repossession and lets say the balance is $20K. If the agent repossesses the car, the client pays them between $325 and $395 on average, and then the car goes to auction and they lose around $10K. If the repo agent makes contact and as a result the customer pays the account current, avoiding a repossession and a potential $10K loss, the client doesn’t pay the agent more money, they usually pay them considerably less, and in some cases they pay them nothing.

As I approach my fiftieth birthday and the twilight years of my career in this industry, it would be nice if I could have a hand in helping clients see the benefits of building relationships with their vendors that are results based, with fair fees paid to the vendors that are justified by a solid ROI for the client, and for the vendor.

In another example, I had an agent tell me the other day that they had a client giving them about 100 accounts a month for the past several years and they were charging somewhere in the range of $350. They tracked their stats and were getting close to 90% of the accounts either repossessed, or the people would pay from the direct contact they were making in the field and they charged them a $150 cure fee. The agent said they were considering asking the finance company for a 5-10% raise because the cost of fuel, state of the art technology, health and unemployment insurance increases and now that their staff was more experienced, their staffing costs had gone up and as a result of these expenses, their profits had been reduced to barely above a break even at $325 a repo, even when they got 90% closed or recovered. The agent called and asked for my opinion and I suggested they open their books and show the client how their margins had been cut, but their performance had been consistent and even if they couldn’t raise their fees enough in one year to make up the difference, maybe they could get a 5% raise, and an extra 5% if they increased their positive resolution to 92% from 90%.

I didn’t hear back from the agent and about a month later I put in a call to follow up. Unfortunately, what I heard was not surprising. Before they made that call they got a call from the new collection supervisor who said they would have to reduce their price to $325 or they wouldn’t receive any more business as they were going with a national forwarding company who was charging $325 a repo.

This is a typical example of a story I hear many times over. If the Forwarder is charging $325, then what are they paying the repo company and what is the quality of the repossessor they’re getting for $225 or $250 - see above stories for the correct answer. How much will the lawsuits in the above stories cost the finance companies? I guarantee it will be seven figures, plus the intangible bad press every finance company seems to be most scared of.

In this example, if the forwarder still got them a 90% recovery rate on an annual basis, they would be saving $25 per repossession, or a total of $27,000 for the year. I’ll bet the average charge off this finance company pays for every full balance skip charge off is about $15,000. So, if the Forwarding company got them a 70% recovery rate, which is a high rate for a typical forwarding company, that would be 20 less repossessions a month, or 240 less a year. At $15,000 per charge off, that’s a loss of about three and a half million dollars a year.

As I’ve said, using a company to help you manage the repossession process can be a benefit, but make sure you hold them accountable. If you have a repossession agent that’s getting you 80% or higher and they meet your other requirements, use the forwarder in the areas where your percentages are less, or in remote areas, and keep the company who has earned your trust and find a way to incentivize them to get an even higher percentage and pay them what they’re worth.

“Is it Price you’re concerned about, or is it cost?” One of the most famous sales consultants of our time, Zig Ziglar, wrote the gospel to this question, and ultimately it’s answer. If you haven’t heard him speak on this topic, please take the time to Google his name and listen to one of his podcasts, which are available on line for free. It certainly can be applied to the Repossession and the Forwarding industries.

Decrease in Forwarding Industry likely

After a six-year sabbatical away from the repossession industry, we formed Find John Doe in 2007. For the past two and a half years, we've focused on building a solid skip tracing agency. Simultaneously to doing this, we've been in the development phase of a software product that we believe will streamline the analysis and management of high risk collateralized loans.

When you operate a skip tracing company, you find some clients want to just get the location of the collateral from you and some clients want you to manage the whole process from locate through repossession. Based on my experience, I can confidently say there is a significant difference in productivity between the two ways. When we pick our own agents, we control the process to some degree. In doing so, we eliminate the middle man, which is what the client becomes when we give them the locate and then we have to wait and find out what happened. In a sense, it's almost like Reverse Forwarding, and as I get further into the industry and the processes and procedures, nuances, and guidelines that dictate how many clients operate, it causes me to reflect on the Forwarding part of our industry.

When VW Credit assigned every one of their repossession assignments to my company in 1994, we didn't call it Forwarding. American Recovery Services (ARS) was a Repossession Management option for VW and many other Sub-Prime lenders in the mid to late 90s. In hindsight, I now see why this option became so popular.

In the 80s I worked at one branch of many for Chrysler Credit. When I was a collector, I had several options of companies I could assign my repossessions to, and I knew every one of these companies, and I knew their owners as they would come in my branch quite often. As a result. it became a manageable process to know which one's performed better than the others. When I was transferred to Long Beach, then Cerritos and then at Mitsubishi Acceptance, the process was the same. I knew the repo companies and their owners and I knew who was good, and who wasn't.

In the early 90s the auto finance industry consolidated. Chrysler Credit, for example, became Chrysler Financial and they went from about 100 branches to four. As a result, those collectors didn't personally know the repo agent, and at the same time the management of the repossession process started to become more and more difficult. For one thing, auto sales started to climb and with that came more units financed. In the mid 90s, Sub-Prime finance became commonplace, which meant repossessions increased significantly. While all this was happening, technological advances were taking place and this was a big advantage for us at ARS as we were the only company I knew of in 1997-98 that could receive assignments and send updates in bulk via email, a much more efficient way to manage volume. We also were tracking stats that clients did not have the capability of tracking, as their legacy systems were old and obsolete, and their internal IT resources were non-existent in many cases.

Due to these factors, sending all your repossession assignments to a Repossession Process Management firm like ARS made sense. The cost benefit analysis we would perform would show potential clients that they could not only save internal costs to manage the process, but they also could save losses as we had an inside knowledge of how these repossession companies operated that most people in the finance industry did not possess, so it was easier to get them to perform at desired levels, and if they didn't, we recognized it immediately and we sent the work to another agent we contracted with if the first agent couldn't correct their deficiencies immediately.

Little did I know that this sub-industry within the auto finance services industry would explode. Today, a significant amount of repossession assignments are ran through "Forwarding Companies". Tens of thousands a month.

Conceptually, it's the same process we developed when we built ARS in 1994. The difference is the forwarding companies margins have increased significantly, which means in many cases they are now using Sub-Prime repossession companies as they are unable to get Prime repossession agents to run their accounts as they are only offering a repo fee that is considerably below market rates. They are doing this more frequently as the competition has heated up in the Forwarding industry, and I'm now hearing some Forwarding companies are offering the clients their service for fee's barely above $300. The other day I heard of a pretty large sub prime auto finance company changing from directly assigning accounts to their agents to using a forwarder and the cost the Forwarder was charging the finance company was $310. That means the Forwarding company has to be getting all their repossessions done for $275 or less, and I would guess the average is closer to $250.

The first problem we are starting to see with the Forwarders use of Sub-Prime agents should be scaring the clients to death.