At A Glance
Charged-off portfolios often contain more accounts than teams can work at once. Recovery Scores adds a way to compare accounts by recovery potential and balance, helping teams decide where to focus collector time and how to guide placement and treatment.Experian’s new Recovery Scores model turns portfolio intelligence into more focused recovery strategies, helping organizations improve returns, direct effort and accelerate speed to cash.
The challenge isn’t simply working more accounts. Whether a debt buyer is evaluating an acquisition, an agency is deciding where to assign collector time or a lender is managing its own post-charge-off accounts, the question is similar: How can limited capacity be directed toward accounts with the greatest potential for recovery?
Prioritizing accounts mainly by age, balance or when they were last worked may not show which ones are most likely to generate a recovery. With the new Recovery Scores model, organizations can rank charged-off accounts by expected collectability, providing a consistent signal to inform placement strategy and treatment decisions across the recovery lifecycle.
Make collector capacity a strategic resource
Working every account with the same level of attention isn’t always practical. The more useful question is: Where should teams focus first to protect speed to cash? Our model performance analysis found:
80% of recovered dollars come from the top 40% of accounts worked.
The value isn’t simply a better ranking. It’s how organizations can use it for collections optimization. Score bands can inform different strategies for placement, outsourcing, auction and legal channel treatment rather than applying the same approach across an entire portfolio.
Look beyond collectability alone
Prioritization rarely comes down to a single variable. Consider two accounts that both rank highly for expected collectability, but one has a substantially larger balance. Their recovery likelihood may be similar, but the potential dollars recovered are not.
The Recovery Scores model uses debt collections analytics by combining Experian’s bureau-based score with current balance information. This helps organizations consider both the likelihood of recovery and the potential dollars at stake, while sensitive balance information remains within the organization’s working environment.
Monitor accounts as they change
The first decision about an account is rarely the last. Teams continually make choices about treatment, placement and resource allocation as accounts move through the recovery process.
Recovery Scores is also available as a trigger. When underlying information changes, teams can receive an update and reconsider an account’s placement without waiting for the next portfolio-wide re-score. An account that shows lower recovery potential today may have a different recovery outlook later.
Turn recovery potential into a portfolio strategy
When portfolios contain more accounts than teams can work at once, the question isn’t simply, “How many accounts can we work?” It is, “Where can our resources have the greatest impact?”
The latest Recovery Scores model helps organizations sharpen placement and treatment decisions. It gives debt buyers a way to price and segment portfolios with greater confidence and gives lenders another tool to direct limited collector time across their own post-charge-off portfolios.
