I privately met with several of the largest repossession companies last summer and we brought in a PR Person to discuss some of the strategies involved in mounting a positive PR campaign around our industry. This person had successfully raised public awareness for industries that faced similar challenges, not quite as difficult, but I feel she can do the job, and she has no connection to anyone, and being located in the capital of the largest regulated state in the country, she may be in the right place.
Her ideas included:
Integrated marketing plans
Key Messages/Logo/Business System and Brand Developments
Media outreach
Media and presentation skills training
Advertising and media buys
Community outreach and public involvement
Web
Email/ VIP outreach list
Email blasts, special programs, etc
I’m running a skip company; Find John Doe, and getting ready to launch a software to hopefully help improve our industry, masterQueue by Intellaegis, so my time is limited at best, but I would participate on a board level if we could form an interest list and then a board and then select a leader to oversee this process.
Forget about the associations running this, if they wanted to do something they would have acted years ago and getting them to work together seems to be a challenge in itself. You need an independent board of entrepreneurs who can represent the industry, and I’d say the qualifications would be:
10 years exp in the repo industry
Verifiable personal experience repossessing cars themselves in the field, and I’m not talking about a ride along
Running a business in this industry that currently generates at least $1m in annual revenue
I’d also include 1-2 client members and I’d invite Kevin as a media rep
1 rep from each association responsible for being the liaison for their association and responsible for collecting dues to fund this program and sharing info to/from their members- and non assoc members would have a liaison for the companies not in associations
A paid independent admin to handle the day to day and budget
email me privately if you are interested in participating:
jlewis@findjohndoe.com
John Lewis
Showing posts with label skip tracer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skip tracer. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
The State of the Repossession Industry -2011 -
The State of the Repossession industry: 2011
A friend asked me, “Can you explain the repossession industry?”
“Funny you should ask”, I commented, “because after reading blog after blog, and comment after comment about all the in-fighting and grandstanding that’s been going on in the repo industry lately, my knee jerk reaction was “Wow, that’s a loaded question”.
“Why is that? she asked.
“Well, for starters, repossession in general has always been a highly fragmented, mom and pop kind of industry, but it appears to quickly becoming more corporate, and those who don’t take the steps to keep up may find themselves left in the dust. We seem to be on the verge of a great deal of consolidation activity as larger players have emerged and they need market share to survive,” I said.
“In the past couple of decades, and especially in the past ten years, many of these mom and pop operations have grown, some due to a passing of the torch to a younger generation within the same family, and some due to new blood coming into our industry, and many of these “newbies” are not afraid to take the risk required to rapidly grow their organizations, ” I explained.
“Ok, so why the fighting?” She asked.
“Well, that’s the tricky part. Let’s start by looking at the players:
• Lenders- this is where it starts- these companies loan money and they range from small finance companies in your local shopping center to credit unions to small, medium and large banks as well as companies built to finance a certain manufacturers car, and these companies are called “Captive’s”. General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) was a captive that always used to finance only GM products, or sometimes other models if they were sold used off the GM dealer lot, but like many companies they got in trouble. Our Government helped them out last summer by making them an offer they couldn’t refuse; “Become a bank and be open to financing anyone, and help out Chrysler btw, and if you do that we’ll give you TARP funds and you will succeed if you follow the plan”. They followed it better than anyone expected, probably because unlike most start up banks they had the deck stacked with GMAC veterans, and their catchy marketing plan and 24 hour internet based business model came on the scene at just the right time and now they’re either on pace to pay all the money back or they’ve already paid it back, and they’re positioned to do an IPO later this year.
• Repo Companies- There’s somewhere between 2500 and 5000 companies in the US that perform this service, most are reputable, a handful are not. The larger they are the better chance they’re reputable, but even the big one’s can take part in questionable business practices at times. A few states license and regulate this industry, most don’t. Most of these companies are small, one-location mom and pop operations doing less than $500K in annual revenue. The larger one’s do in excess of fifty million in revenue, some may even double that. The larger ones cover large areas of a state, all of the state, multiple states, or in a couple cases they cover most of the country. From my experience, running a repossession company has to be one of the more difficult businesses to manage. Finding good people to work in the field is extremely difficult, and training and managing them is even tougher. Your customers who give you work: lenders and companies they use as “middle men” can be demanding, and they’re not usually very loyal, although good repo companies build “brand name loyalty” by providing above-average levels of service. The lenders clients, and people whose cars are being repossessed are rarely happy, and you’re better off avoiding the debtors at all costs, when it’s practical to do so. If you are going to own a repo company you should not have high blood pressure, you shouldn’t be afraid of working 24/7/365 and you need a good lawyer, and a mentor who knows the industry if you’re just starting out, or if you’re struggling. You also better have kick ass software these days or you’ll get left in the dust by those who do. Many people think LPR- License Plate Recognition (see below) technology will change the face of the industry. I’ve seen the industry change with forwarding and skip tracing, and LPR seems to have the same potential impact as these innovations, but as is the case in many businesses and in our lives, (think Facebook and Google) Software as a Service is what will define the future of the repossession industry and without the best software available, repo companies who don’t have it will struggle to compete with those who do, and its as simple as that.
• Repossessors- The un-sung hero’s. Most are male, most drive tow trucks, and most are pretty resourceful. These guys are performing a job that ranks right behind the repo company owner in terms of degree of difficulty. Like the company they work for, they’re paid for results, and unfortunately only certain results count, which usually means no car, no commission. There are a handful of legendary, great one’s, many good one’s and many who are mediocre or just flat not good and in many cases a liability to the company they work for, and to themselves and the general public for that matter. This is a job that requires risk, but when those risks are not calculated, things can go wrong in a hurry, and that can be deadly.
• Forwarders- These are companies who receive all or a portion of a lenders repossession assignments and their job is to manage the repossession process. This includes picking a repo company they contract with and assigning the account to them for repo. They’re supposed to assign accounts only to companies that are licensed (if applicable), insured, and reputable, with the key word being “supposed to” as for some reason many lenders don’t do a very good job of insuring their Forwarding companies are using only reputable repossession companies. After the Forwarder assigns the account to the repo company, they follow for the progress through a series of written updates and phone calls between the forwarder and the repo company. Once the account is repossessed, or after the account closes due to the customer paying, or something else happening including the car not being located, the forwarder bills the lender for their services when that result is positive (repo or paid) or if the unit is not located there is usually not a bill generated; this is called contingency, one of a handful of “four letter words” in the repo industry. In addition to the repossession fee from the company they hire, Forwarders also charge a handling fee on the assignments they successfully conclude. This sub-industry within the repo industry has gone from barely a blip on the radar when we started American Recovery Service in 1994 to a major force in the industry where as many as 40-50% of all repossession assignments now are assigned to forwarding companies. The model has also changed, for the worse in my opinion, and many forwarders don’t use reputable companies to send work to, and for some reason many clients don’t seem to care who the forwarder uses to represent their company, which I think is crazy. The most dangerous job a bank is responsible for is likely repossession, so one would think they would want to insure the person doing the job and representing the bank is a professional, licensed, insured, reputable, trained repossessor. That’s not the case too many times, and if you Google “repo death” you’ll find examples of what happens when it goes south, and in many of these cases there is a Forwarding company involved.
• Skip Tracing Companies – When the finance company doesn’t know where to assign the account for repossession, they hire a skip tracing company like Find John Doe, or dozens of other companies like this who do the same thing; locate people who are trying not to be found. Back in 1988 when we started Skipbusters, I’d never heard of a skip tracing company and I’m not sure if there were any out there. I thought of the idea when I worked at Chrysler a few years earlier. I’d been sent to different branches to find people who had loans that those branches were trying to stop from charging off. The only option we had back then were finding these people ourselves or utilizing repossession companies and some were great at finding anyone, but for some reason we weren’t allowed to pay repo companies for skip tracing, or if we did it was limited to like $75. I’d heard the reason was the repo guy got caught with his hand in the cookie jar too many times and they didn’t trust them to bill for skip tracing as sometimes they’d charge for skip work and they really didn’t do anything that warranted a fee. Nowadays, skip tracing is a big industry, and a big part of the repossession process, and in many cases they also perform the same service as a forwarder when they coordinate the repo process for the lender.
• Skip Tracers – aka Investigators, these are the people who are good at finding people. They utilize public records and information they gather from a lenders notes, from a credit application the debtor filled out when they bought the car, and they gather info through the Internet. Then they contact friends, relatives, neighbors, landlords, ex-places of employment and a variety of other sources, or leads, as they attempt to gain pieces of information on where the customer and/or collateral are located. They are also skilled negotiators, as many times they will make contact and convince the debtor to surrender their unit.
• License Plate Recognition Technology Companies – This is a somewhat new concept, high speed cameras mounted on tow trucks and cars that scan thousands of plates a day. The scanned plate and its GPS location are downloaded into a computer and then the unit is either repossessed right there on the spot, or the lender is notified and asked to pay a fee for the location of the unit. I’m not sure how the second part bypasses laws like the one in California that says its illegal to do this:
(j) Soliciting from the legal owner the recovery of specific collateral registered under the Vehicle Code or under the motor vehicle licensing laws of other states after the collateral has been seen or located on a public street or on public or private property without divulging the location of the vehicle. The fine shall be one hundred dollars ($100) for the first violation and two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for each violation thereafter.
• Transporters – These are the companies who pick up the vehicles from the repossession yard after they’re repossessed, but they’re just bit players in this story.
• Auctions – After the unit is repossessed the debtor is sent a letter and they have a right to pay off the unit, and in some cases they can get it back by paying the past due payments. If they don’t reinstate the loan or pay it off, the unit is transported to a private auction and it’s sold.
• Repossession and Collection Software Companies – In 1998, I wrote a business plan that detailed the development of a repossession software to allow clients and repossession companies an internet portal to send and receive assignments, to update accounts, to process repossessions, to coordinate the transportation of the unit to auction and to document the sale process. Prior to that, I’d been involved in some enhancements of a repossession software called eTracker, and I’d used one of the first repossession software’s called Pro’s, but as of 1998, we were just barely starting to email assignments and updates, so the internet was not on anyone’s radar as a way to manage the repossession process. We ended up selling our company in 1999 to a different company than the company I wrote the business plan for, but a few years later the idea I’d written about came to be in a software built by one of the principals and it became the dominant software in our industry; RDN. There have been others written since then, and some have gained market share, and now, thirteen years later, we’ve finished our own software called masterQueue, and we’re preparing to bring it to market in the Spring. We believe it has the potential to change the face of the lending, repossession, forwarding and skip tracing industries, and most of all, I hope it can help repossession agencies manage their businesses more efficiently, because if anyone deserves a break it’s the repo guys. We’ve also written over a dozen interfaces with other software companies and were hoping that other software companies in our industry will follow our lead in working with each other, as no one wins when we don’t all cooperate and work together, and hopefully RDN will also interface with us to make everyone’s job easier.
A friend asked me, “Can you explain the repossession industry?”
“Funny you should ask”, I commented, “because after reading blog after blog, and comment after comment about all the in-fighting and grandstanding that’s been going on in the repo industry lately, my knee jerk reaction was “Wow, that’s a loaded question”.
“Why is that? she asked.
“Well, for starters, repossession in general has always been a highly fragmented, mom and pop kind of industry, but it appears to quickly becoming more corporate, and those who don’t take the steps to keep up may find themselves left in the dust. We seem to be on the verge of a great deal of consolidation activity as larger players have emerged and they need market share to survive,” I said.
“In the past couple of decades, and especially in the past ten years, many of these mom and pop operations have grown, some due to a passing of the torch to a younger generation within the same family, and some due to new blood coming into our industry, and many of these “newbies” are not afraid to take the risk required to rapidly grow their organizations, ” I explained.
“Ok, so why the fighting?” She asked.
“Well, that’s the tricky part. Let’s start by looking at the players:
• Lenders- this is where it starts- these companies loan money and they range from small finance companies in your local shopping center to credit unions to small, medium and large banks as well as companies built to finance a certain manufacturers car, and these companies are called “Captive’s”. General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) was a captive that always used to finance only GM products, or sometimes other models if they were sold used off the GM dealer lot, but like many companies they got in trouble. Our Government helped them out last summer by making them an offer they couldn’t refuse; “Become a bank and be open to financing anyone, and help out Chrysler btw, and if you do that we’ll give you TARP funds and you will succeed if you follow the plan”. They followed it better than anyone expected, probably because unlike most start up banks they had the deck stacked with GMAC veterans, and their catchy marketing plan and 24 hour internet based business model came on the scene at just the right time and now they’re either on pace to pay all the money back or they’ve already paid it back, and they’re positioned to do an IPO later this year.
• Repo Companies- There’s somewhere between 2500 and 5000 companies in the US that perform this service, most are reputable, a handful are not. The larger they are the better chance they’re reputable, but even the big one’s can take part in questionable business practices at times. A few states license and regulate this industry, most don’t. Most of these companies are small, one-location mom and pop operations doing less than $500K in annual revenue. The larger one’s do in excess of fifty million in revenue, some may even double that. The larger ones cover large areas of a state, all of the state, multiple states, or in a couple cases they cover most of the country. From my experience, running a repossession company has to be one of the more difficult businesses to manage. Finding good people to work in the field is extremely difficult, and training and managing them is even tougher. Your customers who give you work: lenders and companies they use as “middle men” can be demanding, and they’re not usually very loyal, although good repo companies build “brand name loyalty” by providing above-average levels of service. The lenders clients, and people whose cars are being repossessed are rarely happy, and you’re better off avoiding the debtors at all costs, when it’s practical to do so. If you are going to own a repo company you should not have high blood pressure, you shouldn’t be afraid of working 24/7/365 and you need a good lawyer, and a mentor who knows the industry if you’re just starting out, or if you’re struggling. You also better have kick ass software these days or you’ll get left in the dust by those who do. Many people think LPR- License Plate Recognition (see below) technology will change the face of the industry. I’ve seen the industry change with forwarding and skip tracing, and LPR seems to have the same potential impact as these innovations, but as is the case in many businesses and in our lives, (think Facebook and Google) Software as a Service is what will define the future of the repossession industry and without the best software available, repo companies who don’t have it will struggle to compete with those who do, and its as simple as that.
• Repossessors- The un-sung hero’s. Most are male, most drive tow trucks, and most are pretty resourceful. These guys are performing a job that ranks right behind the repo company owner in terms of degree of difficulty. Like the company they work for, they’re paid for results, and unfortunately only certain results count, which usually means no car, no commission. There are a handful of legendary, great one’s, many good one’s and many who are mediocre or just flat not good and in many cases a liability to the company they work for, and to themselves and the general public for that matter. This is a job that requires risk, but when those risks are not calculated, things can go wrong in a hurry, and that can be deadly.
• Forwarders- These are companies who receive all or a portion of a lenders repossession assignments and their job is to manage the repossession process. This includes picking a repo company they contract with and assigning the account to them for repo. They’re supposed to assign accounts only to companies that are licensed (if applicable), insured, and reputable, with the key word being “supposed to” as for some reason many lenders don’t do a very good job of insuring their Forwarding companies are using only reputable repossession companies. After the Forwarder assigns the account to the repo company, they follow for the progress through a series of written updates and phone calls between the forwarder and the repo company. Once the account is repossessed, or after the account closes due to the customer paying, or something else happening including the car not being located, the forwarder bills the lender for their services when that result is positive (repo or paid) or if the unit is not located there is usually not a bill generated; this is called contingency, one of a handful of “four letter words” in the repo industry. In addition to the repossession fee from the company they hire, Forwarders also charge a handling fee on the assignments they successfully conclude. This sub-industry within the repo industry has gone from barely a blip on the radar when we started American Recovery Service in 1994 to a major force in the industry where as many as 40-50% of all repossession assignments now are assigned to forwarding companies. The model has also changed, for the worse in my opinion, and many forwarders don’t use reputable companies to send work to, and for some reason many clients don’t seem to care who the forwarder uses to represent their company, which I think is crazy. The most dangerous job a bank is responsible for is likely repossession, so one would think they would want to insure the person doing the job and representing the bank is a professional, licensed, insured, reputable, trained repossessor. That’s not the case too many times, and if you Google “repo death” you’ll find examples of what happens when it goes south, and in many of these cases there is a Forwarding company involved.
• Skip Tracing Companies – When the finance company doesn’t know where to assign the account for repossession, they hire a skip tracing company like Find John Doe, or dozens of other companies like this who do the same thing; locate people who are trying not to be found. Back in 1988 when we started Skipbusters, I’d never heard of a skip tracing company and I’m not sure if there were any out there. I thought of the idea when I worked at Chrysler a few years earlier. I’d been sent to different branches to find people who had loans that those branches were trying to stop from charging off. The only option we had back then were finding these people ourselves or utilizing repossession companies and some were great at finding anyone, but for some reason we weren’t allowed to pay repo companies for skip tracing, or if we did it was limited to like $75. I’d heard the reason was the repo guy got caught with his hand in the cookie jar too many times and they didn’t trust them to bill for skip tracing as sometimes they’d charge for skip work and they really didn’t do anything that warranted a fee. Nowadays, skip tracing is a big industry, and a big part of the repossession process, and in many cases they also perform the same service as a forwarder when they coordinate the repo process for the lender.
• Skip Tracers – aka Investigators, these are the people who are good at finding people. They utilize public records and information they gather from a lenders notes, from a credit application the debtor filled out when they bought the car, and they gather info through the Internet. Then they contact friends, relatives, neighbors, landlords, ex-places of employment and a variety of other sources, or leads, as they attempt to gain pieces of information on where the customer and/or collateral are located. They are also skilled negotiators, as many times they will make contact and convince the debtor to surrender their unit.
• License Plate Recognition Technology Companies – This is a somewhat new concept, high speed cameras mounted on tow trucks and cars that scan thousands of plates a day. The scanned plate and its GPS location are downloaded into a computer and then the unit is either repossessed right there on the spot, or the lender is notified and asked to pay a fee for the location of the unit. I’m not sure how the second part bypasses laws like the one in California that says its illegal to do this:
(j) Soliciting from the legal owner the recovery of specific collateral registered under the Vehicle Code or under the motor vehicle licensing laws of other states after the collateral has been seen or located on a public street or on public or private property without divulging the location of the vehicle. The fine shall be one hundred dollars ($100) for the first violation and two hundred fifty dollars ($250) for each violation thereafter.
• Transporters – These are the companies who pick up the vehicles from the repossession yard after they’re repossessed, but they’re just bit players in this story.
• Auctions – After the unit is repossessed the debtor is sent a letter and they have a right to pay off the unit, and in some cases they can get it back by paying the past due payments. If they don’t reinstate the loan or pay it off, the unit is transported to a private auction and it’s sold.
• Repossession and Collection Software Companies – In 1998, I wrote a business plan that detailed the development of a repossession software to allow clients and repossession companies an internet portal to send and receive assignments, to update accounts, to process repossessions, to coordinate the transportation of the unit to auction and to document the sale process. Prior to that, I’d been involved in some enhancements of a repossession software called eTracker, and I’d used one of the first repossession software’s called Pro’s, but as of 1998, we were just barely starting to email assignments and updates, so the internet was not on anyone’s radar as a way to manage the repossession process. We ended up selling our company in 1999 to a different company than the company I wrote the business plan for, but a few years later the idea I’d written about came to be in a software built by one of the principals and it became the dominant software in our industry; RDN. There have been others written since then, and some have gained market share, and now, thirteen years later, we’ve finished our own software called masterQueue, and we’re preparing to bring it to market in the Spring. We believe it has the potential to change the face of the lending, repossession, forwarding and skip tracing industries, and most of all, I hope it can help repossession agencies manage their businesses more efficiently, because if anyone deserves a break it’s the repo guys. We’ve also written over a dozen interfaces with other software companies and were hoping that other software companies in our industry will follow our lead in working with each other, as no one wins when we don’t all cooperate and work together, and hopefully RDN will also interface with us to make everyone’s job easier.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The information age
Some people call it Public Records, some call it Data, and in our business we call it a lead.
I call it information.
In the current state of the skip tracing industry, we have a tremendous amount of information at our fingertips.
Since we live in the Information Age, we should always be striving to find better ways to process and use available information to make better decisions.
In the old days, I would get so excited when someone went to Battle Mountain, or any remote location, and they brought me back a local phone book. Suddenly, I had the information I needed, at my fingertips, to crack a tough case. I had a book of leads.
The amount of data available on people these days is amazing. It's the closest thing we've seen to Big Brother.
What's important is to find a way to take that information, streamline the identification of the most relevant data that's available through Public Records, which includes everything about a person that's available on the Internet, and put that into a format that can improve the process of skip tracing.
That's skip tracing in 2010.
I call it information.
In the current state of the skip tracing industry, we have a tremendous amount of information at our fingertips.
Since we live in the Information Age, we should always be striving to find better ways to process and use available information to make better decisions.
In the old days, I would get so excited when someone went to Battle Mountain, or any remote location, and they brought me back a local phone book. Suddenly, I had the information I needed, at my fingertips, to crack a tough case. I had a book of leads.
The amount of data available on people these days is amazing. It's the closest thing we've seen to Big Brother.
What's important is to find a way to take that information, streamline the identification of the most relevant data that's available through Public Records, which includes everything about a person that's available on the Internet, and put that into a format that can improve the process of skip tracing.
That's skip tracing in 2010.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Identifying Risk
I've been skip tracing my whole life.
I think most decent skip tracers have.
I didn't realize it until I was 21 years old and working for Chrysler Credit as a collector.
I'd been hired as a field rep, but that type of work was closer to the shenanigans I used to pull as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. I never stole a car or anything like that, but my buddies and I were pretty mischievous and we did some crazy things when we did sleep outs in the summer. When I realized that my new job involved dressing in black and taking someone's car in the middle of the night, it wasn't too far off my radar screen.
When I got moved inside, I quickly realized that being a field rep was pretty easy because I usually knew where the cars were at, so all I had to do was take them.
Finding the cars proved to be a different challenge.
Each collector had a group of dealerships they represented -meaning that everyone who financed a car for that dealership was in my queue. Fortunately, 90% of the people paid as agreed and I never had to pull their files out of the drawer. Of the 10% who didn't, we usually got that down to between a quarter and a half a percent by their 30th day of delinquency. The month before I got promoted to be a collection supervisor, I kept my queue at zero delinquency for thirty straight days. It was a big deal to "Zero Out" for the day, meaning that no one in your queue with that due date went over thirty days late on that day. Doing it for a few days in a row was hard work, but once I'd developed a plan to identify my riskiest accounts, it really wasn't that big a deal to "Zero out" every day.
Identifying the risk of your queue as a collector is the name of the game.
My territory was Reno, and my "more challenging" customers were involved in the gaming and prostitution industries. I knew some of them from when I was a field rep working their accounts and collecting their payments in the field. Our field reps were like a pick up service. The collector didn't accept a promise to pay, they made an arrangement to have the customers payment picked up. By knowing my customers, I knew who would push me to the 29th day, so I started collecting their accounts when I received their last months payment. Besides being a collector, I was on a first name basis with my regular customers and many times I would have to dig deep into their financial situation to make sure I would get my payment each month.
Nowadays, I think most collectors know their customers about as well as we know the skip accounts we are assigned; not at all, or at least not on a monthly "Hi, how ya doin Mike, hows the job going? Did your daughter have her baby? BTW, when do you think you can get that payment to me as I noticed I didn't get your check as we agreed I would last week".
When field reps were eliminated in the mid 80s, controlling delinquency became more challenging. In the late 80s, when the personal touch went by the wayside to computers, growth, sub prime financing and collectors changing jobs like pro athletes changing teams, it suddenly became more challenging to collect car payments. Using skip tracing companies was almost unheard of when I started SKIPBUSTERS out of my apartment in San Gabriel with my wife in 1988. Now, its becoming a more common tool as collection departments identify risk and realize they need help in resolving the more difficult accounts they have not made progress on.
Identifying Risk. It's still the key to understanding, managing and controlling a queue, a portfolio, or even when broken down to one account. In fact, it should be broken down to one account.
These days, when a customer goes delinquent and you can't find them, you have a number of on line resources you can chose from to develop leads to call to locate your customer. Unfortunately, this information is not perfect, and what's even more unfortunate, is that many collectors will run a credit bureau or a public records report and they'll see an address they didn't have, and without verifying if its good or not, they'll "Shotgun" it out to a repo agency to have them check the address. What's worse is some inexperienced collectors will send out multiple addresses to the repo agent, making their job more difficult because it costs money to check all these addresses. To further complicate the problem, when the car doesn't show, then they'll ask the agent to "Kick it in", make contact, or more directly, do the skip tracing the finance company should be doing on the phone, or hiring someone to do if they are not capable of doing it, or don't have the time or resources to do it themselves.
They've identified the risk, but they've tried to resolve it with a step that delays the job that needs to be done, rolling up your sleeves and finding the customer, and the collateral. I think the main reason they do this is because they don't know how to really skip trace, or they are so overwhelmed with volume that they don't have the time. I also know first hand that while many of the tools available to find the leads are helpful, the sheer volume of this information can also be overwhelming, causing it to not be used properly for its ultimate purpose, to find the lost customer and the collateral.
Risk on an auto loan is identified by a variety of factors:
Balance of the loan
Perceived value of the collateral
Age of the loan
Payment history
Credit History and a sudden change
Employment
Demographics
The quantity and quality of all available leads that can be used to skip trace
Once you identify the risk of an account, you must allow that file the time it needs to be worked to be resolved in a positive manner. It always amazed me that a company would charge off millions or billions in full balance skip charge off losses, but when it came time to drill down and see how they could reduce losses, the obvious solutions seemed to go by the wayside.
A good skip tracing company can give you an outside benchmark to where your staff is in terms of your ROI with each employee. Let me give you an example. After you throw in facility fees, employee benefits and misc. overhead, lets say your cost per collector hour worked is $35. I think this is a pretty low number when you really add everything in, but we'll go with it. Then lets say that collector is working a queue of 100 charged off accounts at an average charge off rate of $18K, for a total queue size, in dollars, of $1.8m. Lets say they locate and recover 25% of their files each month, and the average car they recover brings in $10K at auction. You just spent $6066 in wages to recover $250K. Not a bad ROI.
If you gave a skip trace company a like group of 100 files and your cost to them was an average locate fee of $400, if they got you the same 25%, then your cost would $10K, which is not a good deal for you if both sides get you 25%. Now lets say the skip company gets you 35%. Your cost would increase to $14K, but your recoveries would increase by an extra 10 cars, or $100K if your getting $10K per car at auction. Now you've spent $14K to recover $350K, versus doing it in house at $6066 to recover $250K. You also don't have the burden of the extra employee, and you made an extra $92K. If the skip company can get you 40% or better, then you are really ahead of the game.
Besides the numbers, what you've also gained is an invaluable resource, a work in progress monthly benchmarking challenge to your staff to raise the bar. By collaborating with your skip vendor through regular meetings and constant communication and measurement of the numbers, down to a granular level, you now can forge ahead with a relationship with your skip vendor to improve your numbers and theirs, making it a win-win for both sides.
and when I was hired to
I think most decent skip tracers have.
I didn't realize it until I was 21 years old and working for Chrysler Credit as a collector.
I'd been hired as a field rep, but that type of work was closer to the shenanigans I used to pull as a kid growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. I never stole a car or anything like that, but my buddies and I were pretty mischievous and we did some crazy things when we did sleep outs in the summer. When I realized that my new job involved dressing in black and taking someone's car in the middle of the night, it wasn't too far off my radar screen.
When I got moved inside, I quickly realized that being a field rep was pretty easy because I usually knew where the cars were at, so all I had to do was take them.
Finding the cars proved to be a different challenge.
Each collector had a group of dealerships they represented -meaning that everyone who financed a car for that dealership was in my queue. Fortunately, 90% of the people paid as agreed and I never had to pull their files out of the drawer. Of the 10% who didn't, we usually got that down to between a quarter and a half a percent by their 30th day of delinquency. The month before I got promoted to be a collection supervisor, I kept my queue at zero delinquency for thirty straight days. It was a big deal to "Zero Out" for the day, meaning that no one in your queue with that due date went over thirty days late on that day. Doing it for a few days in a row was hard work, but once I'd developed a plan to identify my riskiest accounts, it really wasn't that big a deal to "Zero out" every day.
Identifying the risk of your queue as a collector is the name of the game.
My territory was Reno, and my "more challenging" customers were involved in the gaming and prostitution industries. I knew some of them from when I was a field rep working their accounts and collecting their payments in the field. Our field reps were like a pick up service. The collector didn't accept a promise to pay, they made an arrangement to have the customers payment picked up. By knowing my customers, I knew who would push me to the 29th day, so I started collecting their accounts when I received their last months payment. Besides being a collector, I was on a first name basis with my regular customers and many times I would have to dig deep into their financial situation to make sure I would get my payment each month.
Nowadays, I think most collectors know their customers about as well as we know the skip accounts we are assigned; not at all, or at least not on a monthly "Hi, how ya doin Mike, hows the job going? Did your daughter have her baby? BTW, when do you think you can get that payment to me as I noticed I didn't get your check as we agreed I would last week".
When field reps were eliminated in the mid 80s, controlling delinquency became more challenging. In the late 80s, when the personal touch went by the wayside to computers, growth, sub prime financing and collectors changing jobs like pro athletes changing teams, it suddenly became more challenging to collect car payments. Using skip tracing companies was almost unheard of when I started SKIPBUSTERS out of my apartment in San Gabriel with my wife in 1988. Now, its becoming a more common tool as collection departments identify risk and realize they need help in resolving the more difficult accounts they have not made progress on.
Identifying Risk. It's still the key to understanding, managing and controlling a queue, a portfolio, or even when broken down to one account. In fact, it should be broken down to one account.
These days, when a customer goes delinquent and you can't find them, you have a number of on line resources you can chose from to develop leads to call to locate your customer. Unfortunately, this information is not perfect, and what's even more unfortunate, is that many collectors will run a credit bureau or a public records report and they'll see an address they didn't have, and without verifying if its good or not, they'll "Shotgun" it out to a repo agency to have them check the address. What's worse is some inexperienced collectors will send out multiple addresses to the repo agent, making their job more difficult because it costs money to check all these addresses. To further complicate the problem, when the car doesn't show, then they'll ask the agent to "Kick it in", make contact, or more directly, do the skip tracing the finance company should be doing on the phone, or hiring someone to do if they are not capable of doing it, or don't have the time or resources to do it themselves.
They've identified the risk, but they've tried to resolve it with a step that delays the job that needs to be done, rolling up your sleeves and finding the customer, and the collateral. I think the main reason they do this is because they don't know how to really skip trace, or they are so overwhelmed with volume that they don't have the time. I also know first hand that while many of the tools available to find the leads are helpful, the sheer volume of this information can also be overwhelming, causing it to not be used properly for its ultimate purpose, to find the lost customer and the collateral.
Risk on an auto loan is identified by a variety of factors:
Balance of the loan
Perceived value of the collateral
Age of the loan
Payment history
Credit History and a sudden change
Employment
Demographics
The quantity and quality of all available leads that can be used to skip trace
Once you identify the risk of an account, you must allow that file the time it needs to be worked to be resolved in a positive manner. It always amazed me that a company would charge off millions or billions in full balance skip charge off losses, but when it came time to drill down and see how they could reduce losses, the obvious solutions seemed to go by the wayside.
A good skip tracing company can give you an outside benchmark to where your staff is in terms of your ROI with each employee. Let me give you an example. After you throw in facility fees, employee benefits and misc. overhead, lets say your cost per collector hour worked is $35. I think this is a pretty low number when you really add everything in, but we'll go with it. Then lets say that collector is working a queue of 100 charged off accounts at an average charge off rate of $18K, for a total queue size, in dollars, of $1.8m. Lets say they locate and recover 25% of their files each month, and the average car they recover brings in $10K at auction. You just spent $6066 in wages to recover $250K. Not a bad ROI.
If you gave a skip trace company a like group of 100 files and your cost to them was an average locate fee of $400, if they got you the same 25%, then your cost would $10K, which is not a good deal for you if both sides get you 25%. Now lets say the skip company gets you 35%. Your cost would increase to $14K, but your recoveries would increase by an extra 10 cars, or $100K if your getting $10K per car at auction. Now you've spent $14K to recover $350K, versus doing it in house at $6066 to recover $250K. You also don't have the burden of the extra employee, and you made an extra $92K. If the skip company can get you 40% or better, then you are really ahead of the game.
Besides the numbers, what you've also gained is an invaluable resource, a work in progress monthly benchmarking challenge to your staff to raise the bar. By collaborating with your skip vendor through regular meetings and constant communication and measurement of the numbers, down to a granular level, you now can forge ahead with a relationship with your skip vendor to improve your numbers and theirs, making it a win-win for both sides.
and when I was hired to
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Skip Tracing Preparation
Skip Tracing File Review Worksheet
The purpose of this worksheet is to show you how to prepare yourself to work a skip file.
Working a queue of files means you have to know how to get in and out of files in a hurry. You need to be quick, yet thorough, in your review of an account before you work it. This step should take no more than 5 minutes, and many times the last minute or so is done when you’re dialing the collector who gave you the assignment, and then when you are waiting for them on hold, you are looking at the last things to review. The skip tracers who multi task this way have proven to be the most effective I’ve come across.
These are the things you want to review BEFORE you make a call on a new file:
1. Client
2. R/O and COX names
3. Collateral
4. Address
5. Delinquency
6. Credit Application and Contract
7. Collection notes
8. Client contact
1. Client- who is the client. Clients operate differently, so first see who the client is and then make sure you understand how they want their accounts worked.
2. Names - Look at the name of the R/O. Is it an easy name to pronounce, do they have a nick name, an American name if they are foreign? These are things you want to determine as its much easier if you know what name your subject goes by. If someone is looking for me and they ask for Johnathon Lewis, everyone they come in contact with will be suspicious. If the subject you are looking for is named Scott Reid and he goes by Scooter, you need to find that out- so when you start working the file- ask people you come in contact with, whom you feel you have their confidence and they will tell you….“Does he have a nick name or does he go by Scott?”
3. Collateral –its important to know what you are looking for. Many clients now don’t include the color of the collateral, the license plate, and some times its difficult to know what the collateral is. The other day we had an agent running an address looking for what they thought was a Honda Jet Ski. The way we received the deal, it had a code for the type of collateral and it was a motorcycle we were looking for. We told them their update said they were looking for the wrong type of collateral, and we got the bike the next night. Go to Google and look up the unit so you can see what it looks like. When you’re calling a neighbor or asking a relative if he drives a little white car, that’s better than asking of they drive a Ford Escort. When you call the client, use that opportunity to ask them if they have a plate or a color.
4. Address – compare the address from the client to what is in the public records you have access to. If a new address pops up in public records, ask them if they had that address, and if not, tell them you’ll confirm it and let them know if its worth giving to a repo agent to run. Clients have a tendency to see a new address pop up in Public or Credit records and they just assign it for repo without verifying the address. We are professionals, and were expected to verify an address as much as possible before assigning for repo, and every assignment needs to have the reason why its being assigned to that address, which you cant do without some form of verification.
5. Delinquency- Many clients don’t provide this information, and some provide bits and pieces. Some accounts are assigned before they charge off and some are assigned after they’ve charged off. These are important things to know. When you speak to the client, if they’re a client who will share this info with you, its helpful to know the following information:
Date last paid - This is important as it tells you how long ago they paid, and many times when someone stops paying, there is a reason that’s worth investigating- did the unit get wrecked? Did they give it to a 3rd party? Did they lose a job? Foreclosure?
Date past due – This tells you how long they have been delinquent. If a person is two payments down versus five payments down, that makes a huge difference in regard to how you approach the way you work the account, and what you say if you speak with them.
Amount past due – This is important if you speak with them and they ask how much do they owe. Many times these customers have not had anyone speak with them for months as they’ve been on the lamb. If you happen to get them on the phone, you may only have one chance to resolve the account, and if you don’t know how far past due they are, in exact numbers, you lose credibility.
Monthly payment amount – This is important as they may have another payment due the following day, so its good to know how much that will be.
Balance – This gives you an idea what the difference is between the amount in full they owe (with interest) versus the actual value of the car. Many times this can have an impact on the customer’s decisions regarding the loan, and the collateral.
Charge off information - When applicable, this is critical information to know. First off, if the loan hasn’t charged off yet, but is nearing charge off, the actual charge off date is important, as that is usually the last date the customer will have an opportunity to make any payments. After a loan is charged off, loan payments are normally not accepted, which means the only payment options after charge off are to pay off the full amount of the loan, including expenses, less interest. The charge off date is also important as many files will close with the skip agency when the loans charge off, so if you are close to resolving the case, it may not matter to some clients as they have to close the file with the skip agency when it charges off.
6. Credit Application and Contract. When available, this can be very valuable. Successful Skip Tracing involves working with actual data, factual information. The credit app and contract are the two documents that were filled out on the day the customer bought the collateral, so this is when the trace starts. The app gives you valuable references, usually people the customer knows well. The numbers may have changed, but just knowing their names and an address can help you skip them down to see if they know your skips whereabouts. The credit app also tells you where the skip was living and what date, how long they were there and sometimes who their landlord is. This information is available in public records, however, many public records have distorted dates as they are only as accurate as what someone entered in a computer. This gives you a starting point, and the more recent the date of the contract the easier it is to trace their steps after they bought the car. It also gives you the customers place of employment information, and sometimes a prior job or address. There are also boxes the customer checks that ask if they’ve ever been convicted of a crime, filed BK, committed a felony, etc.. If you find out they lied on their credit app that technically means they committed a form of fraud, and is something you can use in your investigation.
The contract is the binding legal document between the finance company and the customer, and while you usually have the necessary information it contains, it sometimes can give you important information like a color, the dealership contact info, or the payment amounts. IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CREDIT APP IN THE FILE WHEN YOU REVIEW THE ACOCUNT, ASK THEM TO SEND YOU A COPY OR READ YOU THE INFORMATION FROM IT.
7. Collection notes. Unfortunately, these are not always available, and yet they are possibly the most important part of the pre file review. If you know what has transpired on an account, it’s much easier to work a file, and it can save you a lot of time. While you don’t always take the work someone else has done as the gospel, if the client assigned an account to run an address that looks interesting to you and the repo agent reports they made contact with the guy who just bought the house and he says he bought it out of foreclosure, there is no point in running that address in the field. If the client says a relative is cooperative, or not, that is helpful to determine how you approach the call to that relative, versus going in blindly.
8. Call the client to review the account - This is an important part of how you prepare to work the file. It’s a good idea to introduce yourself if you don’t already know the collector, and even if you do, a couple minutes on the phone discussing what they know about the file and what they’ve done, and asking for the information you need, can all make a big difference in your success.
The purpose of this worksheet is to show you how to prepare yourself to work a skip file.
Working a queue of files means you have to know how to get in and out of files in a hurry. You need to be quick, yet thorough, in your review of an account before you work it. This step should take no more than 5 minutes, and many times the last minute or so is done when you’re dialing the collector who gave you the assignment, and then when you are waiting for them on hold, you are looking at the last things to review. The skip tracers who multi task this way have proven to be the most effective I’ve come across.
These are the things you want to review BEFORE you make a call on a new file:
1. Client
2. R/O and COX names
3. Collateral
4. Address
5. Delinquency
6. Credit Application and Contract
7. Collection notes
8. Client contact
1. Client- who is the client. Clients operate differently, so first see who the client is and then make sure you understand how they want their accounts worked.
2. Names - Look at the name of the R/O. Is it an easy name to pronounce, do they have a nick name, an American name if they are foreign? These are things you want to determine as its much easier if you know what name your subject goes by. If someone is looking for me and they ask for Johnathon Lewis, everyone they come in contact with will be suspicious. If the subject you are looking for is named Scott Reid and he goes by Scooter, you need to find that out- so when you start working the file- ask people you come in contact with, whom you feel you have their confidence and they will tell you….“Does he have a nick name or does he go by Scott?”
3. Collateral –its important to know what you are looking for. Many clients now don’t include the color of the collateral, the license plate, and some times its difficult to know what the collateral is. The other day we had an agent running an address looking for what they thought was a Honda Jet Ski. The way we received the deal, it had a code for the type of collateral and it was a motorcycle we were looking for. We told them their update said they were looking for the wrong type of collateral, and we got the bike the next night. Go to Google and look up the unit so you can see what it looks like. When you’re calling a neighbor or asking a relative if he drives a little white car, that’s better than asking of they drive a Ford Escort. When you call the client, use that opportunity to ask them if they have a plate or a color.
4. Address – compare the address from the client to what is in the public records you have access to. If a new address pops up in public records, ask them if they had that address, and if not, tell them you’ll confirm it and let them know if its worth giving to a repo agent to run. Clients have a tendency to see a new address pop up in Public or Credit records and they just assign it for repo without verifying the address. We are professionals, and were expected to verify an address as much as possible before assigning for repo, and every assignment needs to have the reason why its being assigned to that address, which you cant do without some form of verification.
5. Delinquency- Many clients don’t provide this information, and some provide bits and pieces. Some accounts are assigned before they charge off and some are assigned after they’ve charged off. These are important things to know. When you speak to the client, if they’re a client who will share this info with you, its helpful to know the following information:
Date last paid - This is important as it tells you how long ago they paid, and many times when someone stops paying, there is a reason that’s worth investigating- did the unit get wrecked? Did they give it to a 3rd party? Did they lose a job? Foreclosure?
Date past due – This tells you how long they have been delinquent. If a person is two payments down versus five payments down, that makes a huge difference in regard to how you approach the way you work the account, and what you say if you speak with them.
Amount past due – This is important if you speak with them and they ask how much do they owe. Many times these customers have not had anyone speak with them for months as they’ve been on the lamb. If you happen to get them on the phone, you may only have one chance to resolve the account, and if you don’t know how far past due they are, in exact numbers, you lose credibility.
Monthly payment amount – This is important as they may have another payment due the following day, so its good to know how much that will be.
Balance – This gives you an idea what the difference is between the amount in full they owe (with interest) versus the actual value of the car. Many times this can have an impact on the customer’s decisions regarding the loan, and the collateral.
Charge off information - When applicable, this is critical information to know. First off, if the loan hasn’t charged off yet, but is nearing charge off, the actual charge off date is important, as that is usually the last date the customer will have an opportunity to make any payments. After a loan is charged off, loan payments are normally not accepted, which means the only payment options after charge off are to pay off the full amount of the loan, including expenses, less interest. The charge off date is also important as many files will close with the skip agency when the loans charge off, so if you are close to resolving the case, it may not matter to some clients as they have to close the file with the skip agency when it charges off.
6. Credit Application and Contract. When available, this can be very valuable. Successful Skip Tracing involves working with actual data, factual information. The credit app and contract are the two documents that were filled out on the day the customer bought the collateral, so this is when the trace starts. The app gives you valuable references, usually people the customer knows well. The numbers may have changed, but just knowing their names and an address can help you skip them down to see if they know your skips whereabouts. The credit app also tells you where the skip was living and what date, how long they were there and sometimes who their landlord is. This information is available in public records, however, many public records have distorted dates as they are only as accurate as what someone entered in a computer. This gives you a starting point, and the more recent the date of the contract the easier it is to trace their steps after they bought the car. It also gives you the customers place of employment information, and sometimes a prior job or address. There are also boxes the customer checks that ask if they’ve ever been convicted of a crime, filed BK, committed a felony, etc.. If you find out they lied on their credit app that technically means they committed a form of fraud, and is something you can use in your investigation.
The contract is the binding legal document between the finance company and the customer, and while you usually have the necessary information it contains, it sometimes can give you important information like a color, the dealership contact info, or the payment amounts. IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CREDIT APP IN THE FILE WHEN YOU REVIEW THE ACOCUNT, ASK THEM TO SEND YOU A COPY OR READ YOU THE INFORMATION FROM IT.
7. Collection notes. Unfortunately, these are not always available, and yet they are possibly the most important part of the pre file review. If you know what has transpired on an account, it’s much easier to work a file, and it can save you a lot of time. While you don’t always take the work someone else has done as the gospel, if the client assigned an account to run an address that looks interesting to you and the repo agent reports they made contact with the guy who just bought the house and he says he bought it out of foreclosure, there is no point in running that address in the field. If the client says a relative is cooperative, or not, that is helpful to determine how you approach the call to that relative, versus going in blindly.
8. Call the client to review the account - This is an important part of how you prepare to work the file. It’s a good idea to introduce yourself if you don’t already know the collector, and even if you do, a couple minutes on the phone discussing what they know about the file and what they’ve done, and asking for the information you need, can all make a big difference in your success.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Skip Tracing 101 : Turn Over Every Rock
Skip Tracing 101 : Turn Over Every Rock
Hard work pays off
This common saying can be applied to any business, and Skip Tracing is no different.
Through the years there have been many times when a skip tracer or a collector has come up to me with a file they claimed they were at a dead end on. Because there has yet to be a program written that allows a supervisor to quickly look at a file to determine if the collector or skip tracer has pursued all the available leads, this was not always the easiest claim to agree or disagree with.
“What have you done so far?”
“We’ve had it assigned for repo to the last known address, but he’s moved from there. His parents are covering for him, and the references are no help, I’ve spoken with a couple neighbors but they don’t know anything. I’ve pulled a credit bureau, but he’s late with everyone and when I tried to call the other finance companies, they won’t speak with me due to privacy concerns.”
I’d then take a look at the notes and there were plenty. When I looked at the expenses on the account, we’d spent the money to run the bureaus and we’d paid for several different public records reports. The file was an inch thick, the guy was six payments down, and everyone else had charged off their debts.
Back at Chrysler Credit in the early 80s, when I was the one asking for permission to charge off the loan, we had a “skip worksheet” we had to fill out before we brought the account to our supervisor. I think some companies still use a manual form to do this. It was a four-page document to confirm we’d contacted every reference, neighbor, relative, job, landlord, the post office, the local grocery store, you name it.
In hindsight, it was a valuable exercise, but it was too difficult for the supervisor to really know if the account had been worked properly, and it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as it needed to be. It also was a document that could easily be skewed.
To find a skip, one needs to have several factors working in their favor:
I. The person looking for the skip must be positive that they have a chance to find the person. If you are not optimistic, you’re in the wrong profession.
II. A good skip tracer must be confident, and confidence comes from life experience, followed by skip tracing experience.
III. A good skip tracer must also be a good sales person. My first boss once told me a valuable piece of information when he compared a collector to a salesman. He said you must sell yourself to the person your collecting money from so they have to buy what you are selling, which as a collector was getting them to pay me ahead of everyone else. As a skip tracer, its getting people to tell you what they know, even if it’s the smallest detail.
I can remember one time I was looking for a lady that no one could find. I knew the parents knew where she was, but every time I spoke to them, they claimed they didn’t know her whereabouts. The day before the loan was going to charge off I was probably filling out one of those skip worksheets when I’d realized I hadn’t called every neighbor, and I’d remembered we’d gotten in a new Criss-Cross guide for an address where she used to live. After speaking with a couple people who didn’t have a clue who I was asking about, I found a lady who knew exactly who I was asking about, but unfortunately she had no idea where my customer had moved. I was running out of questions when I asked
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I saw her a few weeks ago at the gas station” She was getting ready to have a baby”.
That one piece of information cracked the case for me. I thanked her, and then asked a female colleague of mine to call the Mom back.
“Hi, Mrs. Wilson, this is Mary. I just got back to town and I’m so excited for Debbie, has she had her baby yet?”
Many skip tracing calls can be based on one question, and how the question is asked, which leads me to the next point.
IV. You must be a good actor. The girl I had make the call was one of twenty in my office, but she had the voice, and the personality, to make the call pay off. She didn’t know it, but I did.
“Hi Mary. We’re so excited. She just had the baby and her and Dan are at Mercy Hospital in Folsom”.
This of course, also turned out to be where the car she hadn’t made a payment on since she bought it almost a year ago was sitting.
The next three factors are probably the most important ones.
V. You must find every rock, sort them in order of importance, and then be prepared to turn them over. You never know which rock you turn over will lead to the person you are looking for.
VI. Ask the right questions. It’s pretty simple. Who, what, where, when and why.
VII. Listen.
The key to skip tracing is finding people who know the person you are looking for, i.e. rocks. Once you find these people, you need to use your acting skills, thrown in with a little data analysis, to quickly understand whom you are speaking with. You will definitely speak differently to a person who thinks and talks fast compared to a person who thinks and speaks slowly; an 18 year old versus an 80 year old; a Harvard grad versus a backwoods hick.
Once you understand the person you are speaking with and you set your tone and dialect, you then need to ask the right questions. Your tone and dialect will set the person on the other end of the phone at ease, and then after each question, you must listen and not interrupt. Most people love to talk, and fortunately, some don’t know when to stop.
The other important part about the person you are speaking with is to quickly determine if they are a friend or foe. Ex-spouses, ex-neighbors, ex-landlords, and ex-employers are great sources of info, especially when the skip didn’t leave on the best of terms.
Nearly everything a person who actually knows the skip discloses to you becomes a lead. A good skip tracer will piece these leads together to crack the case, and they will remain confident and optimistic throughout the process.
Hard work pays off
This common saying can be applied to any business, and Skip Tracing is no different.
Through the years there have been many times when a skip tracer or a collector has come up to me with a file they claimed they were at a dead end on. Because there has yet to be a program written that allows a supervisor to quickly look at a file to determine if the collector or skip tracer has pursued all the available leads, this was not always the easiest claim to agree or disagree with.
“What have you done so far?”
“We’ve had it assigned for repo to the last known address, but he’s moved from there. His parents are covering for him, and the references are no help, I’ve spoken with a couple neighbors but they don’t know anything. I’ve pulled a credit bureau, but he’s late with everyone and when I tried to call the other finance companies, they won’t speak with me due to privacy concerns.”
I’d then take a look at the notes and there were plenty. When I looked at the expenses on the account, we’d spent the money to run the bureaus and we’d paid for several different public records reports. The file was an inch thick, the guy was six payments down, and everyone else had charged off their debts.
Back at Chrysler Credit in the early 80s, when I was the one asking for permission to charge off the loan, we had a “skip worksheet” we had to fill out before we brought the account to our supervisor. I think some companies still use a manual form to do this. It was a four-page document to confirm we’d contacted every reference, neighbor, relative, job, landlord, the post office, the local grocery store, you name it.
In hindsight, it was a valuable exercise, but it was too difficult for the supervisor to really know if the account had been worked properly, and it wasn’t nearly as comprehensive as it needed to be. It also was a document that could easily be skewed.
To find a skip, one needs to have several factors working in their favor:
I. The person looking for the skip must be positive that they have a chance to find the person. If you are not optimistic, you’re in the wrong profession.
II. A good skip tracer must be confident, and confidence comes from life experience, followed by skip tracing experience.
III. A good skip tracer must also be a good sales person. My first boss once told me a valuable piece of information when he compared a collector to a salesman. He said you must sell yourself to the person your collecting money from so they have to buy what you are selling, which as a collector was getting them to pay me ahead of everyone else. As a skip tracer, its getting people to tell you what they know, even if it’s the smallest detail.
I can remember one time I was looking for a lady that no one could find. I knew the parents knew where she was, but every time I spoke to them, they claimed they didn’t know her whereabouts. The day before the loan was going to charge off I was probably filling out one of those skip worksheets when I’d realized I hadn’t called every neighbor, and I’d remembered we’d gotten in a new Criss-Cross guide for an address where she used to live. After speaking with a couple people who didn’t have a clue who I was asking about, I found a lady who knew exactly who I was asking about, but unfortunately she had no idea where my customer had moved. I was running out of questions when I asked
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I saw her a few weeks ago at the gas station” She was getting ready to have a baby”.
That one piece of information cracked the case for me. I thanked her, and then asked a female colleague of mine to call the Mom back.
“Hi, Mrs. Wilson, this is Mary. I just got back to town and I’m so excited for Debbie, has she had her baby yet?”
Many skip tracing calls can be based on one question, and how the question is asked, which leads me to the next point.
IV. You must be a good actor. The girl I had make the call was one of twenty in my office, but she had the voice, and the personality, to make the call pay off. She didn’t know it, but I did.
“Hi Mary. We’re so excited. She just had the baby and her and Dan are at Mercy Hospital in Folsom”.
This of course, also turned out to be where the car she hadn’t made a payment on since she bought it almost a year ago was sitting.
The next three factors are probably the most important ones.
V. You must find every rock, sort them in order of importance, and then be prepared to turn them over. You never know which rock you turn over will lead to the person you are looking for.
VI. Ask the right questions. It’s pretty simple. Who, what, where, when and why.
VII. Listen.
The key to skip tracing is finding people who know the person you are looking for, i.e. rocks. Once you find these people, you need to use your acting skills, thrown in with a little data analysis, to quickly understand whom you are speaking with. You will definitely speak differently to a person who thinks and talks fast compared to a person who thinks and speaks slowly; an 18 year old versus an 80 year old; a Harvard grad versus a backwoods hick.
Once you understand the person you are speaking with and you set your tone and dialect, you then need to ask the right questions. Your tone and dialect will set the person on the other end of the phone at ease, and then after each question, you must listen and not interrupt. Most people love to talk, and fortunately, some don’t know when to stop.
The other important part about the person you are speaking with is to quickly determine if they are a friend or foe. Ex-spouses, ex-neighbors, ex-landlords, and ex-employers are great sources of info, especially when the skip didn’t leave on the best of terms.
Nearly everything a person who actually knows the skip discloses to you becomes a lead. A good skip tracer will piece these leads together to crack the case, and they will remain confident and optimistic throughout the process.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Sub-Prime Mortgage problem sounds a lot like prior Sub-Prime Auto Finance problems from the 90s.
“WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING?”
My buddy is a real estate investor. When I asked him the other day “how’s business”, I was very interested in his take on the situation. Like everyone else, I’ve heard all the bad news about the Sub-Prime mortgage industry. Freddie Mac down two billion for the quarter. Moody’s estimates 1.7 million homes will be lost to foreclosure in 07-08, double the prior two year total, and a conservative number to many. Citigroup CEO resigns after a ten billion dollar write down, Merrill Lynch loses eight billion, and it’s CEO.
What I didn’t know was exactly how this happened, or more importantly, when it would hit rock bottom. I figured my buddy could clue me in, and in doing so, I believe he hit the nail on the head. Several times during his analysis he used the term “Reset Rate”. I knew a reset was the point when a loan resets to a different interest rate, usually a higher one. What I didn’t know was that there was a mechanism in place to track this number. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I’ve learned during the start-up phase of Find John Doe that almost everything can be tracked.
His business, like mine, is directly tied to the Sub-Prime mortgage fall-out. When he told me the high water mark for resets will happen this March, when One Hundred and Ten Billion Dollars in mortgage paper will reset, he caught my attention. When he told me the high months in 2007 were September and December at fifty eight billion each, and when he further explained that the first six months of 2008 will reset at an amount that’s almost equal to what will have reset in all of 2007, I got my answer. We’re in big trouble, again.
I say again because while we were talking, I started to realize that this was sounding way too familiar. I’ve been in the auto finance industry since 1982, and in 1999, I was a small player in the clean up of the Sub-Prime auto financing carnage. Not many people outside our industry even knew of our woe’s back then, mainly because our troubles happened at the same time Internet 1.0 started to implode, and mostly because we’re talking about car loans, not home loans.
I’ll never forget when a client of mine explained Sub-Prime auto financing to me back in the mid 90s. At first, it didn’t sound much different than what some of the mouse-house finance companies you see in rural strip malls were already doing, charging highway robbery interest rates to try and cover their butts in case a large percentage of the deadbeats they put on the road couldn’t make their payments. My client further explained that due to the popularity of credit scoring and better credit reporting methods, there were more people that needed second-chance financing than all the mouse-houses could handle. Then he mentioned a word I’d never really heard associated with auto financing; Wall Street.
Back in those days, my wife and I owned a medium sized repossession business that paid the bills and kept us busy running a business that really needs a screenplay written about its idiosyncrasies to fully explain what goes on behind the scenes in one of America’s more interesting industries, but I digress.
When my client explained how Wall Street investors were looking to purchase large, securitized pools of auto loans, I asked him a simple question; who is going to find the people who skip, and who is going to repossess their cars? He smiled knowingly, and within a couple years my wife and I grew our business into the largest repossession company in the country. What happened was actually pretty straight forward. I quickly realized that these Wall Street investors needed to hire a servicing company to work all these loans they’d purchased, so I started looking around to see who these servicer’s were. Suprisingly, there weren’t many. When we located the one’s who were getting into this during the infancy of Sub-Prime servicing, we soon realized that the one’s servicing the loans were struggling with a process that many lenders have struggled with for years; skip-tracing and repossession.
I’d been hired by Chrysler Credit back in 1982 as a field rep, which was a corporate way of saying repo man. After five years at Chrysler and a year at Mitsubishi’s start up financial arm, I branched out into the private sector to manage two small Los Angeles repossession companies. My wife and I then started a skip tracing company in 1989, and after a few cocktails we named it after a film we’d just seen; Skipbusters. When the Sub-Prime wave began to hit around 1995, Skipbusters started to get really busy, especially after the delays in collection activity that should have taken place on these loans, but didn’t, because each loan had now changed hands from originator, to Wall Street investor, to servicer, in a relatively short period of time. Within a year we had contracted with a nationwide network of what we considered to be the ‘best of the best’ repossession companies in the country, and we were locating and they were popping hundreds of cars every day.
It was during this time that one of the largest servicers came to us with a problem. They were having trouble finding the best repossession companies to do their work on their “normal” repossession assignments. Anyone who has ever been associated with repossession knows the word “normal” is not in our vocabulary. Anyway, they wanted to know if we would manage their repossession process for them. We did some research and quickly determined that no one in the country was doing this type of work. Manheim Auctions had tried it a few years back, and when I called and discussed their experiences with the person who managed this process for them, they suggested I don’t attempt it as it “blew up in our faces”.
We then polled the repossession companies we were sending work to through Skipbusters, and everyone said they were up for more volume, so we formed a company called American Recovery Service. We started by managing the repossession process for many Wall Street investors, and then we branched into doing work for mainstream companies like VW credit, General Electric Capital, and other more traditional lenders. Within two years, our business doubled and then tripled, and we were handling a then industry record fifty thousand assignments for repossession a year. In March of 1999, after too many eighteen hour days and with two kids who didn’t know their parents well enough, we sold our companies to a large auto transport and towing company that expressed a desire to get into the repossession industry. We were the sixty-sixth and last acquisition this company did, but unfortunately, most of the promises they made were never kept.
In hindsight, the promises weren’t kept for three reasons. First off, our main customers, the Wall Street investors, were starting to really take some huge losses. Many were going out of business, and that started to affect our business right after we sold the company. Secondly, the Internet bubble was starting to burst, and that was carrying over into many industries, including ours. The third reason is one that I now see as the biggest reason back then, and the biggest reason now, given the current trouble the Sub-Prime mortgage industry faces. It’s a reason that is as old as time; Greed. When I started to see the house of cards the company who bought mine was built around, I resigned and left the auto finance industry after a twenty-year career.
As I now look back on those times, I can see how greed played an important role in the creation of the Sub-Prime auto industry mess. When my buddy was explaining the current woe’s of the Sub-Prime mortgage industry, I quickly connected the dots and realized that greed must have played a role in how we got into the current situation we are in. It was then I recalled seeing the cover of this week’s Fortune magazine sitting on my nightstand, an issue I’d yet to read. I remembered the cover saying “WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING?” and it showed the faces of four recent CEO’s who resigned their positions amidst the looming crisis. When I got home after talking to my buddy, I read the accompanying article. It went on to detail the billions in losses and write downs major corporations are now having to record when they try and assess the value of these high risk mortgage loans they still carry on their books, “and no one seems to have any idea what they’re worth”, the article goes on to say.
So, when my buddy told me “We’re waiting for the reset to hit the high water mark, and then we’ll see what the fall-out is”, I now realized exactly what he was on to. The problem is caused when the reset amount is more than the person can afford to pay, and it’s compounded when there is no equity in their home because the bottom has fallen out of the housing market. The equity they thought they would have in place to allow them to refinance their loan is not there, i.e. no one will make a $300K loan on a home now worth only $270K, especially when it appears $270K may be $250K in a few months.
The Sub-Prime mortgage problem was caused by a number of factors. For starters, lenders gave brokers too much flexibility in lending qualifications, making it difficult for the lenders to properly assess the risk of each loan. Not that anyone cared, because they all were riding the wave and making money hand over fist, but it was the first breakdown of the most common of all lending practices; qualification. The next factor was the poor structuring of loan products by investment banks. The popular adjustable rate loans in 2005 and 2006 looked great to the rookie investor jumping on the house flipping bandwagon, or even more sadly, to the first time homeowner who was sold a bill of goods they ultimately never could pay. These loans, which are now the one’s that are resetting at record rates and causing the largest impact in the current blood-bath, did not offer lenders or their customers many options when we saw a 200 basis point rise in mortgage interest rates and the sharp decline of new home sales and dropping sales prices. “If the home goes up just half the amount it’s gone up in the past two years, you’ll have more than enough equity to refinance it at a reasonable rate before your balloon is due”. Those are some famous last words many people heard as they signed up for a loan that would eventually become a foreclosure.
So when will it hit rock bottom? My buddy said they’re expecting the fall-out from the first four months of ’08 to hit hard in Q2 and Q3, “because it takes a while after the reset for the foreclosure process to run it’s course”, he said. I agreed, and then I started to wonder how this will carry over into other industries, especially the one I have now jumped back into after a six year absence, auto finance.
When you take a closer look at the number of these loans due to reset in 2008, and the scary similarities to the Sub-Prime Auto Loan problems we witnessed first hand back in 1999, I believe you will agree that the problem looks like it will get worse before it gets better, and statistics are starting to show this problem is starting to carry over into other financial sectors.
An article in the Columbus Dispatch titled “Car sales are the latest Sub Prime casualty” recently stated, ”Payments on 2.73 percent of auto loans made through car dealerships were at least 30 days past due in the first quarter of 2007, a 10-year high, the American Bankers Association said.
Called indirect loans, this type of financing accounted for about 75 percent of all car loans in 2006, said research firm J.D. Power and Associates.”
Tom Krisher wrote, in an article from this past Monday titled “Analysts worry that mortgage troubles could spread to auto loans ”Lehman Brothers analyst Brian Johnson said his analysis of auto loan-backed securities sold by Ford Motor Credit Co. and GMAC Financial Services showed some higher delinquency rates for October and September compared with recent years.”
Experience also tells me that the finance companies that go into 2008 prepared to handle the worst will come out of this much better than those who go in with blinders on, unprepared.
My suggestion to the finance companies is to find a way to recognize a problem before the problem finds you. Identify your high-risk accounts, especially those directly affected by the Sub-Prime mortgage fallout. Update your vendor lists, make sure you have the help in place to handle the storm when it hits, i.e. solid repossession companies and reputable skip tracing companies who have been tested through a champion v challenger program in the larger metropolitan and higher volume areas. Make sure you have a plan in place to see the signs of trouble, and work your early stage accounts harder than ever when those signs show a problem starting to happen. With the tools we now have available at our disposal, this process has never been more efficient, but if you don’t free up and devote your management and IT resources toward looking into the future, you may find yourself wishing you had done that a year from now.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21887610/
http://www.investorsinsight.com/thoughts_va.aspx?EditionID=564
http://jec.senate.gov/Releases/10.04.07SubprimeLeadershipEvent.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/11/26/101232838/index.htm?postversion=2007111212
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/09/02/carloans.ART_ART_09-02-07_A1_0D7PLPO.html?sid=101
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_payment_mortgage
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/may2007/bw20070502_662106.htm?chan=autos_autos+index+page_top+stories
My buddy is a real estate investor. When I asked him the other day “how’s business”, I was very interested in his take on the situation. Like everyone else, I’ve heard all the bad news about the Sub-Prime mortgage industry. Freddie Mac down two billion for the quarter. Moody’s estimates 1.7 million homes will be lost to foreclosure in 07-08, double the prior two year total, and a conservative number to many. Citigroup CEO resigns after a ten billion dollar write down, Merrill Lynch loses eight billion, and it’s CEO.
What I didn’t know was exactly how this happened, or more importantly, when it would hit rock bottom. I figured my buddy could clue me in, and in doing so, I believe he hit the nail on the head. Several times during his analysis he used the term “Reset Rate”. I knew a reset was the point when a loan resets to a different interest rate, usually a higher one. What I didn’t know was that there was a mechanism in place to track this number. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I’ve learned during the start-up phase of Find John Doe that almost everything can be tracked.
His business, like mine, is directly tied to the Sub-Prime mortgage fall-out. When he told me the high water mark for resets will happen this March, when One Hundred and Ten Billion Dollars in mortgage paper will reset, he caught my attention. When he told me the high months in 2007 were September and December at fifty eight billion each, and when he further explained that the first six months of 2008 will reset at an amount that’s almost equal to what will have reset in all of 2007, I got my answer. We’re in big trouble, again.
I say again because while we were talking, I started to realize that this was sounding way too familiar. I’ve been in the auto finance industry since 1982, and in 1999, I was a small player in the clean up of the Sub-Prime auto financing carnage. Not many people outside our industry even knew of our woe’s back then, mainly because our troubles happened at the same time Internet 1.0 started to implode, and mostly because we’re talking about car loans, not home loans.
I’ll never forget when a client of mine explained Sub-Prime auto financing to me back in the mid 90s. At first, it didn’t sound much different than what some of the mouse-house finance companies you see in rural strip malls were already doing, charging highway robbery interest rates to try and cover their butts in case a large percentage of the deadbeats they put on the road couldn’t make their payments. My client further explained that due to the popularity of credit scoring and better credit reporting methods, there were more people that needed second-chance financing than all the mouse-houses could handle. Then he mentioned a word I’d never really heard associated with auto financing; Wall Street.
Back in those days, my wife and I owned a medium sized repossession business that paid the bills and kept us busy running a business that really needs a screenplay written about its idiosyncrasies to fully explain what goes on behind the scenes in one of America’s more interesting industries, but I digress.
When my client explained how Wall Street investors were looking to purchase large, securitized pools of auto loans, I asked him a simple question; who is going to find the people who skip, and who is going to repossess their cars? He smiled knowingly, and within a couple years my wife and I grew our business into the largest repossession company in the country. What happened was actually pretty straight forward. I quickly realized that these Wall Street investors needed to hire a servicing company to work all these loans they’d purchased, so I started looking around to see who these servicer’s were. Suprisingly, there weren’t many. When we located the one’s who were getting into this during the infancy of Sub-Prime servicing, we soon realized that the one’s servicing the loans were struggling with a process that many lenders have struggled with for years; skip-tracing and repossession.
I’d been hired by Chrysler Credit back in 1982 as a field rep, which was a corporate way of saying repo man. After five years at Chrysler and a year at Mitsubishi’s start up financial arm, I branched out into the private sector to manage two small Los Angeles repossession companies. My wife and I then started a skip tracing company in 1989, and after a few cocktails we named it after a film we’d just seen; Skipbusters. When the Sub-Prime wave began to hit around 1995, Skipbusters started to get really busy, especially after the delays in collection activity that should have taken place on these loans, but didn’t, because each loan had now changed hands from originator, to Wall Street investor, to servicer, in a relatively short period of time. Within a year we had contracted with a nationwide network of what we considered to be the ‘best of the best’ repossession companies in the country, and we were locating and they were popping hundreds of cars every day.
It was during this time that one of the largest servicers came to us with a problem. They were having trouble finding the best repossession companies to do their work on their “normal” repossession assignments. Anyone who has ever been associated with repossession knows the word “normal” is not in our vocabulary. Anyway, they wanted to know if we would manage their repossession process for them. We did some research and quickly determined that no one in the country was doing this type of work. Manheim Auctions had tried it a few years back, and when I called and discussed their experiences with the person who managed this process for them, they suggested I don’t attempt it as it “blew up in our faces”.
We then polled the repossession companies we were sending work to through Skipbusters, and everyone said they were up for more volume, so we formed a company called American Recovery Service. We started by managing the repossession process for many Wall Street investors, and then we branched into doing work for mainstream companies like VW credit, General Electric Capital, and other more traditional lenders. Within two years, our business doubled and then tripled, and we were handling a then industry record fifty thousand assignments for repossession a year. In March of 1999, after too many eighteen hour days and with two kids who didn’t know their parents well enough, we sold our companies to a large auto transport and towing company that expressed a desire to get into the repossession industry. We were the sixty-sixth and last acquisition this company did, but unfortunately, most of the promises they made were never kept.
In hindsight, the promises weren’t kept for three reasons. First off, our main customers, the Wall Street investors, were starting to really take some huge losses. Many were going out of business, and that started to affect our business right after we sold the company. Secondly, the Internet bubble was starting to burst, and that was carrying over into many industries, including ours. The third reason is one that I now see as the biggest reason back then, and the biggest reason now, given the current trouble the Sub-Prime mortgage industry faces. It’s a reason that is as old as time; Greed. When I started to see the house of cards the company who bought mine was built around, I resigned and left the auto finance industry after a twenty-year career.
As I now look back on those times, I can see how greed played an important role in the creation of the Sub-Prime auto industry mess. When my buddy was explaining the current woe’s of the Sub-Prime mortgage industry, I quickly connected the dots and realized that greed must have played a role in how we got into the current situation we are in. It was then I recalled seeing the cover of this week’s Fortune magazine sitting on my nightstand, an issue I’d yet to read. I remembered the cover saying “WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING?” and it showed the faces of four recent CEO’s who resigned their positions amidst the looming crisis. When I got home after talking to my buddy, I read the accompanying article. It went on to detail the billions in losses and write downs major corporations are now having to record when they try and assess the value of these high risk mortgage loans they still carry on their books, “and no one seems to have any idea what they’re worth”, the article goes on to say.
So, when my buddy told me “We’re waiting for the reset to hit the high water mark, and then we’ll see what the fall-out is”, I now realized exactly what he was on to. The problem is caused when the reset amount is more than the person can afford to pay, and it’s compounded when there is no equity in their home because the bottom has fallen out of the housing market. The equity they thought they would have in place to allow them to refinance their loan is not there, i.e. no one will make a $300K loan on a home now worth only $270K, especially when it appears $270K may be $250K in a few months.
The Sub-Prime mortgage problem was caused by a number of factors. For starters, lenders gave brokers too much flexibility in lending qualifications, making it difficult for the lenders to properly assess the risk of each loan. Not that anyone cared, because they all were riding the wave and making money hand over fist, but it was the first breakdown of the most common of all lending practices; qualification. The next factor was the poor structuring of loan products by investment banks. The popular adjustable rate loans in 2005 and 2006 looked great to the rookie investor jumping on the house flipping bandwagon, or even more sadly, to the first time homeowner who was sold a bill of goods they ultimately never could pay. These loans, which are now the one’s that are resetting at record rates and causing the largest impact in the current blood-bath, did not offer lenders or their customers many options when we saw a 200 basis point rise in mortgage interest rates and the sharp decline of new home sales and dropping sales prices. “If the home goes up just half the amount it’s gone up in the past two years, you’ll have more than enough equity to refinance it at a reasonable rate before your balloon is due”. Those are some famous last words many people heard as they signed up for a loan that would eventually become a foreclosure.
So when will it hit rock bottom? My buddy said they’re expecting the fall-out from the first four months of ’08 to hit hard in Q2 and Q3, “because it takes a while after the reset for the foreclosure process to run it’s course”, he said. I agreed, and then I started to wonder how this will carry over into other industries, especially the one I have now jumped back into after a six year absence, auto finance.
When you take a closer look at the number of these loans due to reset in 2008, and the scary similarities to the Sub-Prime Auto Loan problems we witnessed first hand back in 1999, I believe you will agree that the problem looks like it will get worse before it gets better, and statistics are starting to show this problem is starting to carry over into other financial sectors.
An article in the Columbus Dispatch titled “Car sales are the latest Sub Prime casualty” recently stated, ”Payments on 2.73 percent of auto loans made through car dealerships were at least 30 days past due in the first quarter of 2007, a 10-year high, the American Bankers Association said.
Called indirect loans, this type of financing accounted for about 75 percent of all car loans in 2006, said research firm J.D. Power and Associates.”
Tom Krisher wrote, in an article from this past Monday titled “Analysts worry that mortgage troubles could spread to auto loans ”Lehman Brothers analyst Brian Johnson said his analysis of auto loan-backed securities sold by Ford Motor Credit Co. and GMAC Financial Services showed some higher delinquency rates for October and September compared with recent years.”
Experience also tells me that the finance companies that go into 2008 prepared to handle the worst will come out of this much better than those who go in with blinders on, unprepared.
My suggestion to the finance companies is to find a way to recognize a problem before the problem finds you. Identify your high-risk accounts, especially those directly affected by the Sub-Prime mortgage fallout. Update your vendor lists, make sure you have the help in place to handle the storm when it hits, i.e. solid repossession companies and reputable skip tracing companies who have been tested through a champion v challenger program in the larger metropolitan and higher volume areas. Make sure you have a plan in place to see the signs of trouble, and work your early stage accounts harder than ever when those signs show a problem starting to happen. With the tools we now have available at our disposal, this process has never been more efficient, but if you don’t free up and devote your management and IT resources toward looking into the future, you may find yourself wishing you had done that a year from now.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21887610/
http://www.investorsinsight.com/thoughts_va.aspx?EditionID=564
http://jec.senate.gov/Releases/10.04.07SubprimeLeadershipEvent.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/11/26/101232838/index.htm?postversion=2007111212
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2007/09/02/carloans.ART_ART_09-02-07_A1_0D7PLPO.html?sid=101
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_payment_mortgage
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/may2007/bw20070502_662106.htm?chan=autos_autos+index+page_top+stories
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)