In February, Spokeo joined thousands of collections industry professionals and fellow vendors for a few days in the desert, discussing challenges and opportunities facing the industry at the 2025 RMAi convention. The sessions at this year’s conference and the conversations we had with collections professionals between talks revolved around two main points: the industry’s adoption of new technologies and uncertainties about the regulatory environment we’ll operate under. For the benefit of those who couldn’t attend or those who want to compare their impressions with others’, here are our team’s key takeaways.
1. The Industry’s Ongoing Shift to Digital Debt Collection
The case for a digital-first collections strategy has been building since before the COVID pandemic, and we’ve written about it here previously. But the presentations at the conference and feedback from attendees who spoke with our team demonstrated that the shift to digital is still very much a work in progress for the industry as a whole.
To date, the digital communications channel with the highest uptake has been email. In TransUnion’s 2024 Debt Collection Industry Report, 74% of respondents reported using email for communication with debtors, up 6% from the previous year. Yet, both physical mail (87%) and telephone calls (86%) remained more widely used, and it’s unclear how broadly and how effectively email is being utilized, even within agencies where it is a common tool.
This post won’t dig too deep into the details of transitioning to a digital-first collections process.
Instead, we’ll dive deep into the factors complicating or limiting digital adoption that were hot topics of conversation on the floor at RMAi — as well as which technologies companies are prioritizing.
Headwinds Inhibiting Technological Change
There’s a pretty strong consensus in the industry that digital debt collection will be a good thing, but getting there — in the face of some fairly significant headwinds — is proving to be a challenge. Each agency’s own situation is different, but some of the recurring issues we heard included:
- Inertia: The industry has used calls and letters for generations, and that kind of institutional inertia can be difficult to overcome.
- Resources: The time and effort required to implement new technology can be a concern in terms of both staffing and IT requirements (whether in-house or contracted).
- Budget: Commitment to new technologies also requires funding, which can be an issue for small agencies in particular. This might also be classed as a “resources” issue.
- External factors: The past five to six years have been unusually chaotic for the collections industry (and the economy as a whole). Nobody’s eager to launch significant initiatives in times of upheaval.
- Lack of information: Key decision-makers at many agencies may simply be unaware of the available technologies, their uses, and their potential impact on recoveries and ROI. Our team at the conference found this to be a common theme.
One additional key factor is agency size, which is a strong predictor of technology use. Transunion’s report breaks this out: 71% of agencies with fewer than 20 full-time employees (FTE) use email, while that figure is 91% for agencies with 100 or more FTE. The difference is even more pronounced with other technologies, with small agencies adopting them at a fraction of larger competitors’ rates.
Where is the Industry Trending?
Even as agencies grapple with implementing email, and some question its continued efficacy, other technologies are seeing a growth in interest. Small agencies were heavily represented at RMAi’s breakout sessions, and our team reported that SMS text messaging and ringless voicemail (voicemail drop) are the two technologies that delegates were most interested in.
That’s pretty consistent with the chatter we’ve been hearing all year. Online consumer portals (for payment and information purposes) are getting some traction, especially at larger agencies. Interest in text messaging was definitely more universal, perhaps because it’s more accessible for smaller agencies.
Which Technologies are Getting Overlooked?
Hearing from attendees about which technologies they’re interested in and which ones aren’t even on their radar was especially interesting for our RMAi team. Paradoxically, ringless voicemail – despite all the interest we heard – also falls into this category: Everyone seemed to know about it, but surprisingly few were actually implementing it. A couple of other things we considered exciting, but which earned a collective shrug as far as awareness and implementation, were chatbots/digital assistants (on websites or phone systems) and social media communications.
As a tech company, perhaps it’s easier for us to be enthused about promising technologies, but both of those tools hold a lot of promise that’s currently being overlooked.
2. Uncertainty About the Regulatory Environment is Top-of-Mind
Both the uncertainty and the rapid pace of change in the regulatory environment (and the corresponding compliance burden for agencies of all sizes) have become a major focus for the industry as a whole.
Sessions at the conference and feedback from our team’s interactions with delegates centered around a few major points.
Medical Debt Continues to Be a Difficult Niche
Medical debt in the United States accounts for approximately $220 billion, according to a 2024 analysis by the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, and affects some 20 million Americans. That represents a substantial opportunity for business in the debt industry, but in practice, many agencies at the conference are approaching with caution.
The former administration’s regulatory changes, barring many forms of medical debt from being reported to credit agencies, removed a significant negative incentive for consumers to prioritize medical debt. Ambiguity about what is and isn’t covered under the new rules is a deterrent: if a medically necessary purchase is made on a credit card, is it medical debt or consumer debt? What about medical-adjacent purchases, such as adaptive renovations for persons with chronic medical conditions?
These rules may be rolled back by the new administration, which hypothetically favors the accounts receivable industry, but uncertainty around the regulatory environment is not conducive to forward planning.
Uncertainty Around the Regulatory Environment
This brings us to a second major point that was widely discussed at the conference. The new administration has targeted the CFPB itself for a significant reduction in staffing and a rollback of its regulatory powers. The agency, as currently constituted, through significant funding cuts by the Executive Branch, may in effect cease to exist.
Superficially, this might be seen as a “win” for the industry, but it was clear from conversations we took part in at the conference that many see it as a potential headache. The fear is that the work of collections will ultimately become more difficult, not less, if federal regulation is supplanted by a patchwork of state and local legislation. This will be especially impactful in the case of agencies operating across multiple regions or jurisdictions.
New York City’s New Regulations
New rules implemented by New York City were the subject of a lot of discussion by attendees at the conference, and they may provide a look at how lower jurisdictions might seize the initiative in the absence of strong federal regulations. The legislation, slated to take effect in October of 2025, makes a number of changes, including:
- Capping the weekly allowable number of contacts at three
- Requiring additional disclosures from the creditor
- Strengthening consumers’ ability to challenge debts’ validity
- Increases creditors’ liability for compliance violations by employees or third-party collectors
- Increasing creditors’ record-keeping obligations
- Requiring a “mini-Miranda” statement on each call stating that it may be recorded and used for collections purposes
Businesses operating in New York argue that this represents a big increase in the difficulty and administrative overhead required to collect on money they’re owed and a drag on their profitability. For the industry as a whole, it’s less about the new rule’s specific details and more about the idea of individual municipalities regulating collections activity.
New York City is admittedly an outlier, albeit with a population and economic activities larger than many states. But the idea of needing to manage compliance all the way down to the municipal level can be frustrating and adds to the uncertainty facing the industry.
The Evolving Role of Technology in Collections
At first glance, the 2025 RMAi conference’s two key underlying themes – the industry’s continued shift toward digital-first collections and the growing compliance challenges as a result of regulatory changes – have relatively little in common. But in truth, both point to the increasingly important role of technology in debt collections.
The evidence is clear that a digital-first collections process improves profitability and ROI. In uncertain times, the innate tendency is to draw back on investment, but selective technology upgrades can make companies more resilient and better able to cope with whatever turbulence may come their way.
Investing in a nimbler intelligence product, such as Spokeo for Business, can help ease the transition to a digital-first collections process for many agencies. Spokeo integrates both regulated and open-source data not typically available in credit headers into a single, intuitive search database that makes contacting debtors—while staying compliant—easier than ever before.
To learn more about how Spokeo for Business can improve your agency’s operations, see a demo of the product, or arrange a no-cost trial, please reach out to our team using the contact information on our Collections and Skip Tracing page.
Sources
McKinsey Company: The Customer Mandate to Digitize Collections Strategies
TransUnion: 2024 Debt Collection Industry Report
Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker: The Burden of Medical Debt
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Fast Facts: Consumer Reporting of Medical Information Proposed Rule
American Association of People with Disabilities: Explaining Medical Debt and the CFPB Rule: What’s Going on With Medical Debt, and How Does it Affect People With Disabilities
NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection: Frequently Asked Questions: New Rules for Debt Collectors