Scott Hamilton, Banking & Lending Strategy Leader, reports from an invite-only collections conference attended by a lot of the largest third-party agencies as well as many top law firms.

Catch the video or read on to see what everyone was talking about.

What were the big topics of conversation?

"They're generally talking about the increased volumes being placed for sure. The prediction that liquidation rates are going to be a little slower. But that's fine. Good volume is good volume. And how can they get smarter to reach out to everybody, but do it in a way that optimizes cost and continued liquidation rates?"

How can teams keep costs down?

"There's two vectors that I'm hearing. One is you might dial and allocate a lot more labor toward accounts that you think deserve it. But then on the other side, digital strategies are getting a lot of discussion. I think for the most part, everybody has the bare minimums from a digital standpoint, they send the same message to everybody. And they hope they pay. But there's more talk around building the same types of models that you have for voice, building in the digital space."

How do organizations balance voice and digital outreach?

"Different ways. Some people allocate it down one path or the other. Others are doing both at the same time, and just make sure they literally don't happen on the same day. The campaigns will go on odd days and even days or something like that. So it varies."

Side note: It doesn't have to be like this - learn about getting voice and digital working together.

What are some new interesting trends in borrower scoring?

"The traditional FICO scores are what the industry has been built on for a while, but being able to extract new data insights, obviously from Prodigal around out of the voice conversation. Neustar, I've heard reference to a handful of times, really just getting additional data sources to help bolster the effectiveness of either the voice or the digital strategies."

What has been the impact of student loan payments?

"There's been a lot of discussion. In this particular conference, someone asked the question, "What percent of the accounts that are in play have a student loan trade line?" It was 30%. I didn't know if it would be 10 or 50. But 30 made sense. And for that 30, they're unsure to what degree it's going to impact payment rates. It definitely will impact the size of the payment. But whether they're going to downright not pay is is less of a concern."

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