Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at the nation’s forthcoming delayed debt crisis. Last week, we considered how foreclosures and auto repossessions will likely increase over the next year as borrowers are forced to repay debts that were postponed during the height of the pandemic. Repossession Lot Inspections and Occupancy Verification Inspections, we argued, will become all the more important in this light.
Something that gets lost in these conversations, however, is the fact that the financial stresses of the pandemic and its attendant debt have not been evenly distributed across generations. Millennials have taken an utter beating during the pandemic and are accruing credit card debt at an alarming rate.
Today, we are going to look at millennials and their debts, which are soon coming due, and how the debt collection industry must rise to the occasion.
According to Experian, millennials have the fastest growing credit card debt of any generation, with an average balance of $4,651. This isn’t an issue of irresponsibility; the odds have been stacked against them for a long time. They entered the job market in the middle of the 2008 recession and have never entirely recovered. They are straddled with student debt for an education that did not necessarily translate into the upward mobility they were promised. And then there was the pandemic.
Moneywise summed it up succinctly: “Millennials are living on their plastic as the pandemic sees their finances hit hard again by another recession.” All of this means that, since World War II, millennials will be the first generation that will die poorer than their parents.
The reality of millennial debt, troubling as it is for those living it, will obviously infuse the debt collection industry with new business, particularly as forbearance granted during the pandemic begins to run out.
To ensure that debt collections are done in compliance with federal requirements and industry best practices, lenders turn to debt collection networks. These national networks vet their members, and often this vetting process includes a Debt Collector Inspection. TrendSource OnSite Inspections offers in-person Debt Collection Inspections across the United States.
The primary purpose of Debt Collection Inspections is to ensure that private information remains private within debt collection call centers as mandated by the FTC.
Think about it: Debt collectors are privy to a great deal of personal information about the borrowers they deal with. Given this level of access to personal and financial information, the industry would be ripe for identity theft, exploitation, and even extortion. This is why the FTC has strict guidelines governing the protection of this information.
Debt Collection Inspections, therefore, check for things like:
Debt collectors handle sensitive information, Debt Collection Inspections help to ensure they keep it safe.
We cannot wave a magic wand and make millennial debt vanish. But TrendSource OnSite Inspections can help lenders and debt collection networks ensure that its collection is done above board in ways that protect borrowers’ personal information.