Experian(R), the leading global information services company, today launched its Business Owner Background ReportSM, a new patent-pending service that combines Experian’s commercial data, consumer data and proprietary technology to link business owners and principals to their current and previous business interests, identifying risks that could be overlooked with traditional risk-assessment tools.

“Business owners typically have hidden risks that could affect the way their business meets its financial obligations, such as undisclosed financial commitments and previous fraudulent activity. In today economy, it is more important than ever to identify these risks before they result in potential credit and fraud losses,” said John Monderine, president of Rapid Recovery Solution, inc. “They developed the Business Owner Background Report product line to provide unprecedented visibility into a business owner’s relationships by combining their extensive consumer and commercial data assets with state-of-the-art analytics, enabling the end user to reduce credit risk and increase profitability.”

The Business Owner Background Report provides a comprehensive view of the business owner by identifying liabilities across all known business associations that may represent a credit risk. The report includes the time frame of the individual’s association with the business and the financial condition of each of the business owners’ current affiliations, allowing users to evaluate a business owner’s risk across all of their business assets.

In addition, Business Owner Background Report assists users in minimizing fraud by verifying application information, validating that an applicant is an authorized representative of a business, identifying suspicious activity associated with the owner’s consumer credit file and revealing associations with people and businesses that may have been associated with fraud losses in the past.

Business Owner Background Report allows users to: Identify a business owner’s or principal’s current business interests and historical affiliations Reveal liabilities and commercial credit performance across all of a business owner’s current affiliations Identify conditions and relationships that suggest an owner or a principal may be linked to fraud Prioritize commercial collection efforts based on an owner’s business assets Uncover additional contact locations for more successful commercial debt collection.

Business Owner Background Reports are available in three different formats that include varying levels of detail to meet specific business needs. All three Business Owner Background Reports are available online through BusinessIQSM, as well as through direct integration methods, including CPU-to-CPU and XML delivery. Basic linkage reports are also available via traditional batch delivery.

Rapid Recovery Solution is an attorney based Debt Collection Agency that specializes in consumer debt collection and commercial debt collection both nationally and internationally.. This article, Business Owner Backround Report is released under a creative commons attribution license.

The definition of a collection account is an account with late payments that have been forwarded to a bill collection company, generally when the debt has fallen ninety to one hundred and twenty days late. Creditors will either attempt to collect their debts themselves, or more often send unpaid accounts to third party collection agencies to remove them from their accounts receivables. Then they will write off the debt in full that is owed as a loss.

From doing this, the creditors reap two benefits: first, they can write the debt off as a loss on their taxes, and second, the cash that does get collected is then recorded as a profit. Time is the enemy in the collections industry, and when an account gets to old enough, it might be sold from the original creditor to a third party collection agency for a fraction of the original amount.

The third party agency becomes the creditor after this, the original creditor benefits from the purchase, and any money that the third party collection agency collects after the original purchase goes straight to them.

After receiving mail correspondence from a debt collection agency, it is always a good idea to verify that the company that is contacting you has the legal right to collect the debt on your delinquent account. By law you have five days after the agency contacts you to request verification of the debt, and you must do this in writing. Get the fax number of the debt collection agency for this purpose.

Keep in mind that a debt collection company might hold on to a collection account for only a few months, and if they cannot collect the debt that is owed, the account may be forwarded to another debt collection agency. This process continues until the account is paid, or the statute of limitations (typically seven years but depends by state) on the debt runs out.

Rapid Recovery Solution is a commercial collection agency that composes stories about commercial debt collections. Free reprint avaialable from: What Is A Collections Account? Debt Collection Basics Part One.

In the first article of this series I explained what a collections account was. It is a delinquent account that generally runs 90 to 120 days late. Collections accounts will either be collected by the original creditor itself, or sent out to collection agencies. Sending an account out to a collection agency benefits the creditor because they can both write the debt off on their taxes and collect profit on the money owed.

Sometimes old debt will be sold to a third party collection agency who becomes the new creditor. This old debt will be collected or sold to another agency until it is paid or the statute of limitations (usually seven years but it differs by state) runs out. At this point, a third party debt collection company doesn’t have the authority to negatively mark your credit score or take legal action against you, but they are legally able to send letters to you and persist with the collection phone calls.

Collection agencies will obtain the following data to coordinate a game plan to collect the debt that they are trying to get: the name and address of the debtor and a record of all correspondence with them, the amount that is owed by the consumer and the date of the last payment. A collection agency has the authority to pull a credit report on a debtor and communicates with the credit bureaus often to keep information current.

All third party collection companies are regulated by Federal (the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act) and state laws that are typically very strict. They report to the Federal Trade Commission, which tracks statistics and complaints about third party collection agencies.

It is only a very rare case in which the Federal Trade Commission will get involved in a single complaint about a debt collection agency, but if the agency notices a trend that many people are complaining about the same agency it will look into it.

Rapid Recovery Solution is a commercial debt collections agency that writes about commercial collection agencies. This article, Debt Collector Basics: Who They Have To Answer To Part Two has free reprint rights.