Nobody Answers the Phone: How Default Management Moved Upstream
Only 13% of collections calls get answered. So what replaced the phone? Ten years ago, default management was almost entirely a phone-based process. Today the phone answers 13% of the time — and the industry has rebuilt itself around digital-first...
Only 13% of collections calls get answered. So what replaced the phone?
Ten years ago, default management was almost entirely a phone-based process. Today the phone answers 13% of the time — and the industry has rebuilt itself around digital-first outreach, behavioral data at a scale no single lender can reach, and models that predict on day one of delinquency how long an account will take to cure. Jay Mosman of Akuvo and Dave Wasik of Second Order Solutions join host Barry Roach to trace how the discipline got here. Jay explains how Akuvo processes 30 million consumers and 110 million banking accounts a night across 200+ institutions — and why, for a large share of delinquent borrowers, the correct action is to leave them alone. Dave, who ran collections and recoveries for Capital One's U.S. card business through the Great Recession, closes with a contrarian take: the biggest near-term win for collections leaders has nothing to do with AI.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
- Why digital-first now beats phone-first on loss mitigation outcomes, not just on cost
- What the 90% of delinquencies that resolve inside 30 days reveal that credit scores can't
- How a severity-of-delinquency model predicts cure time on day one at 85–90% accuracy
- Why the real value of an unanswered outbound call is the caller ID itself
- Where collections leaders should spend the next 18 months
Jay Mosman — CEO & Founder, Akuvo. Nearly two decades in banking before founding a series of companies over thirty years, including Accelerant and now Akuvo, both focused on default management and portfolio risk.
Dave Wasik — Partner, Second Order Solutions, a credit and lending advisory firm working with banks, specialty lenders and fintechs across the credit lifecycle. 30+ years in credit and lending; previously led collections and recoveries for Capital One's U.S. card business through the Great Recession.
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