Applying Your Favorite Pastime to Collections

Rank-ordering is a favorite pastime of many Americans. In fact, if I were to rank-order “rank-ordering” as a pastime, I would rank it right up there with arguing. Actually, one of…

Rank-ordering is a favorite pastime of many Americans. In fact, if I were to rank-order “rank-ordering” as a pastime, I would rank it right up there with arguing. Actually, one of the most fun things about ranking is that you then get to argue about it with others, often while drinking at a bar—yet another favorite pastime! No wonder we love it so much! We seem to love ranking things so much that we love it more than the things themselves, a phenomenon that I’m pretty sure sums up our passion for both college football and The Voice.

As fun as it is to rank things right down to the most pointless category (e.g., the mid-aughts series Battlestar Galactica is the greatest reboot of a 1970s television show, and it’s not even close, and if you don’t agree with me, you’re a complete idiot), for many lenders, it’s not a silly pastime at all; it’s a critical task.

For an area such as prioritizing collections, getting the best rank-order possible could mean life or death for your business. That’s because contacting your borrowers can cost immense time and resources, and therefore it’s vital that you prioritize your potential loan losses correctly.

Implicit in that task is making sure you have the right criteria. When I rank Raiders of the Lost Ark as the greatest movie ever made, I’m probably using a different set of criteria than the person who says it’s Crash, and we could both be right.*

But when prioritizing collections, there absolutely are bad criteria and wrong ways to go about it, and they can be financially lethal if you’re not careful.

FICO has spent decades studying and developing collections data, methodologies and decision software, and we can help your business make sound rankings. Our solutions will enable you to deploy your resources in the most profitable way possible.

In the brief video below, part 5 of our automotive finance series, we show you how we’ve applied our solutions to auto lending. Please take a look, and let us know if we can help you prioritize your collections operations. Imagine how much fun you’ll then have ranking the Top Ten Ways of Spending Your Extra Savings!

For those who’ve missed my prior blog posts about our auto finance video series, catch up now on parts 1-4:

  1. I'd Like to Buy the World a Better Decision
  2. Making the Right Decision…How Sweet It Is
  3. The High-Risk Game of Spotting High-Risk Customers
  4. Fooled by Limited Customer Views? Never Say Never
*Not a chance.
chevron_leftBlog Home

Related posts

Take the next step

Connect with FICO for answers to all your product and solution questions. Interested in becoming a business partner? Contact us to learn more. We look forward to hearing from you.