Investment Retrievers, a debt purchasing firm, is seeking to expand its business with the powersports industry, Chief Executive James Kiley told Powersports Finance.
The Folsom, Calif.-based company purchases charged-off debt from lenders, and aids in debt collection, working in industries such as auto finance and consumer credit cards, and with companies like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase Bank and Chrysler Capital.
“I think the draw to different lenders to selling their debt is that they can — monthly or quarterly or annually — rely upon an income stream from a portion of their portfolio that’s not producing any income, without any cost to them,” Kiley said. “Alternatively, they will assign anything that gets charged off monthly, and we collect for them at a 30% to 50% rate, depending on what they want us to do.”
Powersports is currently only a small portion of Investment Retrievers’ portfolio. The company, which works with powersports lenders like ThunderRoad Financial, believes it can help finance businesses increase their bottom lines through new income streams.
“We understand that even though these accounts are delinquent, it’s all about brand reputation,” Kiley explained. “ThunderRoad, or any of these other lenders, they don’t want to sign their debts to a company where their consumers are going to get beat up. They’re hoping these guys recover and get their credit back and hopefully can become a borrower again down the road. And so, we take very seriously the originator of that debt.”
Founded in 2001, Investment Retrievers is a “mom and pop shop” competing in a “huge arena with big players,” Kiley added. “A lot of companies over the last five or six years have gone under, companies our size, because they couldn’t adhere to the compliance standards that are being set forth by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and different regulatory agencies.”
One example of changes with debt collection practices involved the CFPB’s proposed changes to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in May to protect consumers from harassment by debt collectors. The changes include a limit on the number of calls debt collectors may place to reach consumers, as well as specifying the contents of messages left for consumers.
