Press Release

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE & REDUCING COST IN COLLECTIONS ACTIVITY

Equifax enhances its Debtor Management Solutions to aid collections and recoveries

London, March 16th 2009 - It is already well-documented that consumers are feeling the financial squeeze with redundancies, loss of income and a huge reduction in the availability of credit. The consequence for the credit industry is that more people are defaulting on their credit agreements and it is becoming harder to recover outstanding debts. Recognising that this challenge is being faced by all sectors of the consumer credit marketplace, leading credit information provider, Equifax, has enhanced its portfolio of Debtor Management Solutions with its Collections & Recovery Scores.

"As consumer indebtedness grows and insolvency rates increase it is crucial for Collections teams and Debt Recovery Companies to use the most accurate and effective solutions to recover outstanding debts," confirmed Laurence Hamilton, Sales Director at Equifax. "In particular, they need to use tools that will ensure they put resource in the right place to recover the debts that are recoverable rather than chasing every outstanding debtor."

"The Equifax Collections & Recovery Scores are built on the wealth of data we hold on consumers, in order to provide a highly reliable means of assessing the likelihood of an individual improving or recovering from a collection status within three months. Scores have been created for levels of recoverability, giving Collections teams the ability to set the most effective strategy for recovering outstanding debt."

Businesses using the enhanced Collections & Recovery Scores will benefit from three key tools:

The Early Stage Collections Score identifies the 'can't pay' or 'won't pay' debtors at an early stage of them defaulting. The higher the score, the higher the probability that the individual's status will improve and this provides a crucial indicator of those customers that are probably just having short-term financial difficulties and, therefore, should be nurtured for on-going sales opportunities. Conversely, the lower the score the greater the probability of the debtor's status worsening. By having a clear signal of these debtors, collections strategies can be set to tackle these higher risk debts quickly.
The Late Collections Score identifies those customers likely to recover after three missed payments and those that will continue to miss those payments.
The Recovery Score recognises that debtors in recovery demonstrate many different features, from being in default on one account but paying others. This score therefore looks for a debtor's willingness to pay and predicts the likelihood of collecting 20% of the defaulted balance.

"Equifax is an established market leader for adding intelligence to data and empowering our customers to make the best decisions and these new enhancements to our Debtor Management Solutions illustrate this capability" concluded Laurence Hamilton.

"Our goal is to help companies operate the best collections strategies by identifying those debtors on which it is worth applying resources for recovery, which is crucial as we continue to face challenging economic conditions."

ENDS

For further press information please contact: Wendy Harrison, Cecile Stearn, Margot Tomkinson or Jenny Staniforth at HSL on 020 8977 9132 / Fax: 020 8977 5200 or Email: margot@harrisonsadler.com