By 2 Minutes
In today’s environment of enhanced scrutiny from regulators and clients, there is an audit for just about everything. In a recent webinar sponsored by InterProse, one of the panelists lamented that the ARM industry is getting to a point where there are too many audits.
For those who are interested in accessing a recording of the webinar, which
discussed which audits a collection agency should conduct and why, please click the link to the right. The speakers for the webinar were Tim Collins, the chief compliance officer of TrueAccord, and Paige Tortorich, the internal audit manager at Enhanced Resource Center.
The webinar panelists agreed that anything a collection agency can to do make the auditing process more efficient is something they should consider doing. For example, users can take advantage of the certificates and reports that are part of a hosted platform solution, like InterProse ACE. When using an on-premises solution, the collection agency then becomes responsible for ensuring process and infrastructure compliance.
Audits are meant to identify risks or deficiencies in a company’s operation. The best idea is to start process auditing from points where debt collection operations are the riskiest and then progress toward less risky areas of the business. Letters are often a particular problem area for collection agencies, one of the panelists said during the webinar, which makes that part of the business a good area for regular audits.
Whether a collection agency is large or small has little bearing on the types of audits it will be required to do. As one of the panelists pointed out, the agency’s clients do not necessarily care how big the agency is. What the client cares about is the potential risks associated with outsourcing part of its business to that particular agency.
One important benefit of audits that is often overlooked is their ability to help win business.
An agency that advertises its completed SOC 2 audit, for example, could win business over an agency that has made no such investment. An agency should engage with its sales team to find out what kinds of audits are being mentioned during sales calls, and use that as a determinant in deciding what audits to have conducted.
While audits can be helpful in winning business, they are not a revenue-generating part of a collection agency’s business. Outsourcing to a provider offering a modern, cloud-based platform offers collection agencies the opportunity to inherit certain audit results, freeing up more time to focus on what matters: collecting money.
