Jeremy Ruth serves as the Sr. Director of Default Account Servicing for Arvest bank. He has been with the bank for 20 years and has experienced the bank’s growth from $2.5B to over $20B in asset size. He oversaw the transition to a centralized collection environment, while emphasizing customer service, compliance, and performance throughout the collection cycle. Responsibilities include early stage through post charge off collections and recovery for direct consumer, indirect auto, small business/commercial credits, equipment finance/leasing, as well as overdrawn and charged off deposit accounts. Bankruptcy, repossession, foreclosure, loss mitigation, third party collections, vendor management and quality control functions are within scope of his responsibilities. Jeremy has a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in management and a Marketing minor.
What you’ll learn about in this episode
The CFPB’s 653-page final rule Regulation F opens the door to interact with consumers across all forms of electronic communications including SMS text, email, and social media messaging. However, as these communication options are opening up, consumers can still become confused when they are contacted by a company they don’t know, and a telephone number they don’t recognize. This along with disclosure regulation causes a phenomenon called the Dance of the scorpions. Where a consumer is suspicious of giving information due to fraud or being scammed, and the debt collection agent needing to verify the information to make sure they are disclosing the information about the debt to the proper person.
A concept introduced in the final rule is a concept of a handoff letter. The handoff letter is sent by the creditor and must “clearly and conspicuously” disclose that the debt has or will be transferred to a debt collection company. Jeremy’s company was among the first to embrace this concept and test the results. In this episode he will share how they went about implementing the handoff letter, the results they documented as a result of this process, as well as lessons learned and next steps.
Resources:
Website: https://www.arvest.com/
Company LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arvest-bank/
Email: jruth@arvest.com
LinkedIn: Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-ruth/
Jeremy’s Podcast The Mayo and Mustard Show
Additional Resources: