Today’s Biggest Challenge in Data
By: Jared Kirby
I’ve always said that masterQueue sits in a very unique position in the Auto Finance Industry. We see what data and skip trace process works, what doesn’t work, and most importantly what the industry can do to improve the way data is used to yield a higher level of success.
Today’s biggest data challenge, is knowing what your challenge actually is. At a high-level look, the problem is simple, “I am spending too much on data and not seeing results.” When you get down to the root cause of data issues, you find that most issues can be easily solved by technology.
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Stop Buying the same data multiple times
One of the most common struggles is not being able to save, track and utilize data multiple times throughout the lifecycle of an account. If you are buying a report, working the account, then rebuying data when you want to work the account a second time, you are spending two or more times as much as you could be.
Rich Francisco, Vice President for Market Development of the Auto Group at TransUnion, said in a recent discussion at Used Car Week, “Big Data can stress an organization. You have to be able to take in that data and do something with it and having a platform to do something with it is absolutely critical.”
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Adjusting your strategy to reflect historical accuracy
Another struggle that many lenders face, is not knowing what reports to buy or when to buy them. Surprisingly, most rely on employee intuition as the number one deciding factor in what data to buy. By tracking historical results, you can improve your data strategy to create a more cost efficient and reliable waterfall.
For example; if “Data Provider A” gives a 26% right party contact rate, but “Data Provider B” gives a 31% right party contact rate, it would be more effective to purchase “Data Provider B” first and “Data Provider A” as a follow up source.
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Let technology decide what phone numbers to call
In a technology driven world, your collectors and skip tracers shouldn’t be manually deciding what phone numbers to dial. There are enough historical data points, that a computer can look at a phone number and decide whether that phone number should be called first, or if it should be the very last phone number dialed in a last-ditch effort to make contact.
The amount of time spent gathering and analyzing data by a human being is a giant inefficiency with employee salaries being one of your highest expenses. So, why not put their time to better use and have them do the things a computer can’t do, like convince a customer to pay or surrender the vehicle.
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Start utilizing more data earlier in the account life cycle
It’s no secret that you want to contact your customer as early in the delinquency as possible. Paul Desaulniers, Senior Director of Risk Scoring, Trended Data and Collections at Experian, said in a recent study “In bucket One and Two, less than 10% are right party contacts”. At masterQueue, we have proven that if you gather more data earlier in the account lifecycle, you have a much higher probability of contacting the customer and resolving the delinquency. Not only do your right party contact rates go up but then at 60 days past due, you likely won’t need to go buy more data, or buy the same data a second, third or fourth time.
When your early stage collection team saves the phone number as a right party contact, or as a bad phone number, your late stage collection team can spend more time skip tracing and less time finding good phone numbers. This gives your late stage team the time to take the steps that need to be done to locate the asset, versus performing the same steps a second time or looking at the same data twice.
These are the more common struggles around data gathering and usage that we see here at masterQueue. These challenges could be costing you more than the solution to fix the issue. If you have any questions or comments or are just curious about what masterQueue has in place to resolve these issues for a quick win, please feel free to reach out.
Make sure to check out the Mainstream Data Panel from Used Car Week Moderated by Dave Albers from LCS Financial Services featuring Richard Francisco from TransUnion, Brett Collett from Equifax and Paul Desaulniers from Experian at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vKnRAycNuI&t=1143s
Jared Kirby
Strategic Business Development at masterQueue
(916) 235-1196
