Adam Parks (00:08)
Hello everybody, Adam Parks here with another episode of Receivables Podcast. Today I am here with Pam Kirchner, the CEO of BCA Financial Services, here to talk to us about how the ACA State Guide has had a positive impact on her business. And Pam, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your insights. I really do appreciate you participating.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (00:31)
Hello, Adam. Good to see you as always.
Adam Parks (00:35)
Well, I really do appreciate your insights today, but before we kick things off, could you tell everyone a little about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (00:43)
Oh, wow. Okay. You're dating me way back, Adam. I actually got into this industry, I think it's 47, 48 years ago. And I answered an ad that said, if you want to be a team player, call this number. And I called that number and it's history. I had the opportunity to work for two incredible gentlemen, Bill Heron Jr. and senior, and in 1997.
Adam Parks (00:54)
Okay.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (01:13)
His daughters and I purchased the company and now it is co-owned by myself and the granddaughter of the original owner. So we're a third generation company, been in business for 81 years. And so yeah, it's been an amazing journey.
Adam Parks (01:29)
wow. It sounds like an amazing journey. And it's always interesting to meet people and hear how they joined the debt collection industry because no two stories are the same. And yours is very interesting. I want to dig into that some more in a future episode. You know, for today's discussion, though, we've been talking about ACA State Guide and its capabilities of helping people to organize the mass of amount of compliance related information that we face as the debt collection industry. Can you tell me a little about the product itself and how you're using it within your business?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (02:03)
Well, first of all, just have to say kudos to ACA because the job that they have done is amazing. I find it to be one of the most valuable resources that we have as members of ACA. the state food state guide has been around for a really long time, but it was much more cumbersome in the past, right? And so there were individual PDFs for each of the states and you had to go through the control F to find the topic that you wanted. And this, and I know we'll get into it more, but the new guide is our Bible. It's our regulatory Bible. mean, every department within our organization uses it in some way. ⁓ It has just done a tremendous job. And so anytime we need to research any subject, that's the first place we're going to go is the ACA guide.
Adam Parks (02:46)
in some way. It's a unique information set and it's not something that we can just run to Google or chat GPT and find. So what kind of compliance challenges were you facing that led you to need a product like this?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (03:12)
what compliance challenges do we not face as agency owners, truly? It's every day that we're dealing with changes every single day. And you might be looking at a new product. You might be looking to get into collections in a different state. You're just trying to figure out what are the privacy laws? What are the.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (03:34)
What do they say about talking to spouses? I mean there's just thousands and thousands of questions that we deal with every single day as collection professionals. And again, it's up on my computer much of the day. if somebody asks me a question, I'm just really quick to go in there and say, and again, from a sales perspective, we use it. Do we want to get into collections in this state? When we're looking at new tools. What are the rules that we need to be familiar with when we're getting into those new tools? First party collections. We do majority first party collections. Which states have rules relating to first party? So it's endless. So from, you know, from your perspective, how does having everything become centralized and get faster access actually impacting you? Because it doesn't sound like it's just the speed. Is it increasing the depth of your research as well?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (04:33)
100%. So again, the state guide has all 50 states, has all the territories, DC, and it covers so many different topics from licensing to bonding to trust accounts. I mean, it's endless, right? But it's really, it's number one, it's saving us a significant amount of money. Imagine if every time you have a compliance question, And in our industry, how many times a day do you have a compliance question? If you had to go to an external compliance officer or attorney and ask this question, can you imagine how costly that would be? But again, it impacts every aspect of your business. We use it when we're responding to requests for proposals and they ask questions about how do you monitor all the different changes in the states. It's a great answer. We have this tool and it just shows that we're proactive from the compliance standpoint. again, there's just so much to search. before you would have to go, mean, one state guide could be 50 pages. I mean, if you look at Nevada or
Adam Parks (05:45)
We have definitely one state guide to beat 50 pages. mean, if you look at him.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (05:52)
I mean, again, 50, 100 pages, right? But a lot of that doesn't pertain to each agency. So I may only do this with a certain state, so I only may deal with a certain type of collection. So I deal with healthcare collections. A lot of it might be government collections. So the new guide, what you can do is you can pick the states that you want, you can pick the topics that you want, and you can actually create a spreadsheet that you can export.
Adam Parks (05:55)
Yeah. So I may only be with certain states. I only may deal with a certain type of collection. So you get healthcare collections. A lot of it might you pick the topics that you want and you can actually create a spreadsheet that you can export and you can share with your training team or your clients. So it's just a great way to down to the topic.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (06:21)
And you can share with your training team. You've been training out your compliance team, whatever. it's just, again, a pretty incredible.
Adam Parks (06:29)
Well, it sounds like it's having a qualitative impact on your business. And I'm curious how you look at as a business owner, the quantitative impact. are there any KPIs or measurements that you're looking at to say like, really is, I'm getting an ROI on this investment.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (06:48)
Jokingly, what I would say to that is that I could make one phone call to an outside attorney to research one subject for me, and that would pay for several years of the ACA subscription to the state guide. So that's ROI. Okay.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (07:14)
and think about the preventing losses. Just that alone. I mean, the prevention of the lawsuits is definitely a big one. And there's no, you know, small cost to reaching out to a third party, whether it be an attorney or another organ as any third party, you know, and the cost associated with that process. But as you look at your internal team, like you had mentioned sales, for example, how is your sales team using a tool like this?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (07:45)
So our sales team, when they have an opportunity, and they should, they have this incredible opportunity, they think it's an incredible opportunity. And before they go to me, they are going to go to our compliance team and they're going to say, tell me about the rules. What do I need to know before I go to talk to Pam about wanting to do business in Nevada? Because they already know what my answer is going to be.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (08:10)
certain states where they're going to go in and they're going to say, okay, what do I need to know about that state? I tease about it, but they do go and they talk to our compliance team and say, okay, tell me how difficult would it be? We're not doing business in this state today. How difficult would it be for us to set up the processes to be able to do business? Sending a pre-collect notice before, so many of the
Adam Parks (08:15)
about how to save means now.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (08:39)
the rules and the regulations. So just having that information available to them is very helpful. Also to our training team, imagine if we handed our training team 50 PDFs and said, go through these PDFs and find the things that you need to train on, right? So we know the topics that we want to train on. We know the states in which we want to train on. And so we can export this spreadsheet to share with the training team. So it makes training a lot easier on them. So you're able to filter the tools so you'll be able to filter the information to really customize it make it specific to you and so even just in the amount of time and energy that you're saving in terms of the training folks researching and doing that work. Sales is involved, compliance is involved. I mean, it sounds like the whole organization is accounting using this. who else across the organization is finding value in the tool?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (09:30)
It is. Our finance department needs to know about trust accounting and they also handle some part portion of the state audits. And that's the other thing. If you have a state that's coming to audit you, what a great resource to just review that, make sure, hey, I am not missing anything. I have all the information I need to have on collection letters, all the disclosures that I need to have, that's all in place. So just having everyone in our organization easily educated on everything they need to know from a compliance perspective.
Adam Parks (10:08)
So you're getting value out of it because it's helping you not only communicate in that RFI and be able to say, how are you monitoring on a state basis? Okay, well, I'm using the ACA guide, but it sounds like it's having a direct impact in how you're communicating with clients and regulators and the rest of the world as well. Talk to me about what you've learned from that.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (10:29)
you know. You don't know what you don't know. So before we were relying upon, we listened to every webinar, right? And everything that was available to us to listen to, you can't, again, unless you have, you're a very, very large organization and you have a huge compliance department, you cannot read through all the rules and regulation that might have an impact on your organization.
And we did, and we tried. We tried really hard. But we can't rely upon webinars and a limited amount of information to tell us everything that we need to know. So I think that what I learned was there was a lot that we thought that we knew that we didn't know. Because now ACA has made it so easy for us to know that information. But it's almost embarrassing if you don't. So I think that's. Interesting. Okay, so the information has become so available and so well organized that it's raised the expectation that organizations even within the industry have of each other. What an interesting approach.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (11:36)
I think that, yeah, because again, we all do, I think that for the most part, far majority, all of ACA members who want to be compliant, and they try really, really hard to be compliant, and they search and they have benchmark groups and they ask each other these questions and they're trying to get all the answers and they're trying to do the right thing. And we all tried that really, really hard and we still do because again, you I'm not trying to over-sell the state guide. just being honest about what it's done for us. But there's no one tool that's going to give you everything. The other thing that's really cool about the guide is that there's a link to where the information came from. So if you want to dig deeper yourself, you just click on that link and it will take you directly to the statute, the reg, whatever. And so you can see for yourself what it actually says, because we all know it's all about interpretation. So if you want to see for yourself, just click on that link and it will take you directly to the statute, the right whatever. And so you can see for yourself whether that's what it says. We all know it's all about interpretation, right? And so, but
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (12:33)
that gives you the tool to do it all. But just, it's such an easy tool to use. ⁓ I would almost be embarrassed if I was not using it. somebody asked me a question and I didn't go first there to try and find the answer, that's how easy
Adam Parks (12:33)
that gives you the tool to do it all. But just, it's such an easy tool to use. I've always been embarrassed by not using it. Somebody asked me a question, like, you know, first they have to try and find the answer. That's how I'm
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (12:47)
it is to use.
Adam Parks (12:48)
Well, just earlier today, I had somebody reach out to me and ask me what's going on from a medical standpoint in terms of credit reporting across the United States and what do they need to be aware of. And I literally sent them a link to the ACA state guide and said, I think you need to go get the state guide because I don't do that. Really, you're a medical expert. I'm not. I'm kind of a more generalist or consumer product. So it's a little bit different for me and our needs are different.
I did have the opportunity to demo the product with the team and get a feel for what it was because I like to research. I like to write reports. I love data figures and numbers. I thought that the user interface was really slick and clean. It was easy enough to get around. It was easy enough to use. And I don't normally do a podcast talking so specifically about one product, but I really liked what I saw. And I thought that the availability of that information on a wider scale is something that really does benefit the debt collection industry on the whole, right? Like our ability to understand, like you said, our ability to learn and to be on the forefront of what's happening. And I don't want to find out about a new rule because I got a lawsuit. Like that's the worst place for me to be finding out about something new. So I like the proactive approach. But as you took this incredible tool set, you deployed it in your organization, what was the most surprising result that you've seen?
from adopting the ACA state guide.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (14:14)
Well, first of all, I have to say that I have to go back what you said. The ease of the use surprised me. Right? So, you know, our benchmark group had met with Colin and, you know, his team member and Scott, and we kind of went through, we showed them our spreadsheets and everything that we do. And so, you know, I thought that they were going to give us something similar to that. Right. But instead, they gave us something much greater than that.
Adam Parks (14:20)
Okay.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (14:40)
And that is the ability to customize it and the ease of use. So Adam, when you were in there, I'm sure that you saw, you know, there's almost like a dropdown menu that says, here's all the topics, select what topic you want. Here's all the states, select what, you know, state you want. Now save that, right. And you can go back and change it. can. And the other thing is that when a change is made in one area of the guide, it, is then in every area of the guide. So what was happening before is like on the search point documents, you know, if you change it on one document, you have to go and change it on, you know, manually change it on 10 other documents. This changes on all. So the AI that they're using for this tool is great. The ability to go into the table of content. was the other thing with the original guides, they were not necessarily in the exact same order, they didn't cover the exact same subjects. Now for every single state, there's a table of content, you click on the table of content, and that's a hyperlink that takes you to the information. So you're not going through tons and tons of information. So I was surprised over, you know, the navigation, the intelligence behind it, the ease of use, and then how much we're using it.
Adam Parks (15:48)
the information. So you're not finding the tons and tons of information. So I was surprised there were enough. Okay.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (16:04)
So again, it's just like, you our compliance team is using it all the time. Different departments are asking questions now where they would have been like, you know, I don't want to bother our compliance team because this really isn't that important. Now it's so easy to get the answer that we're saying, have a question, you know, just ask us because we can get the answer very easily.
Adam Parks (16:24)
I like that. Now, it sounds like this compliance tool has evolved pretty significantly over the last couple of years. You made some requests, you've been actively engaged in communicating, they came back with an incredible product. How do you see this product preparing you for the next, let's call it three to five years of compliance changes down
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (16:46)
I think that ACA has even greater plans. I think that they're doing this in phases and I think that they're probably having another phase, although I can't imagine what more they're going to do. But I think you and I were talking and the amount of rules and regulations are changing and coming at us and with artificial intelligence coming our way, privacy laws, think about everything that's going on with fraud and the work from home and just as our arts were changing so rapidly, the tools that we're using are changing so rapidly. Imagine if we had to go and by the time, let's just say that there's a company that had not started texting yet and they wanna start texting.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (17:38)
they have to know what are all the rules in every single state that are related to texting. What about if they had to go into every single state site and look for that information? And number one, where would you go? Where would you find information about text? Exactly, so I think that this tool is going to get us through the next few years.
Adam Parks (17:52)
Here, what site? What site are we talking about here?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (18:04)
without us really having to have, I think that it's become really important for us all to have compliance teams, but how big those compliance teams are, think that ACA is now giving us the tools, but especially for the smaller members, they don't have to have a dynamic compliance team, they can rely upon this tool. I think this is a platform. And that's where this is how I think it's going to help us prepare for the next let's call it five years, because it's a platform. And because the information is so digestible, sortable, it's, it's structured information. So they've taken a whole bunch of mumble jumble that exists in all of these different legal documents and all of these different jurisdictions, some are digital, some are, you know, they're probably back there with highlighters typing it in based on some of the state court systems.
But with all of that information coming together, being on a platform that's structured and manageable, I think that's how it prepares us for the future. And that's why it's a subscription base and not a flat fee, because you're not buying, it's not the encyclopedia, right? Like you're not buying Encyclopedia Britannica and you're getting this book once you're getting access to that frequently updated information that's happening in real time and available to your team in real time. So when something happens, tomorrow, it's there when you start searching for it. And as you're looking for that information, I think that's how a tool like this keeps an organization on the cutting edge indefinitely into the future. And the tool may change, and I'm sure they're gonna add features because there's gonna be more great members like you that go, hey, but what if it did this? And I can see that they're making a commitment to this product and how they're going to continue to evolve it over time is an agency who has a long standing history. What advice do you have for smaller, newer organizations that are starting to get active in the space in terms of kind of leveraging these tool sets? Any advice for the smaller guy out there?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (20:05)
Log on to ACA right now and sign up for this subscription. Honestly, it's minimal. The cost is minimum. If it saves you one lawsuit, it was worth it. If it saves you a call to an outside attorney to research the one subject you just paid for the tool, it's priceless.
Adam Parks (20:07)
you
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (20:29)
It truly is priceless. my recommendation to you, especially small agencies, your larger agencies, they have compliance teams and they have the resources and the people to go and do these searches. I feel like the smaller teams, don't necessarily have the resources that you need to be able to go and do that. So I think it's good for every size agency. mean, we have 200 people and it works for us, but.
Adam Parks (20:36)
They have the finance tools and they have the resources. I feel like the smaller team doesn't necessarily have the resources. need to be able to tell if you do that. So I think it's good for every size of the agency. I we have 200 people and it works for us.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (20:54)
You know whether you're 10
Adam Parks (20:54)
you know, whether you're.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (20:56)
people 200 people or you know 5,000 people I think it's a valuable tool and and my recommendation would be Don't wait any longer ago and the other the value that we really talked about was that as part of this There is like the webinars and monthly webinars. There's a document that shows you all of the recent changes So if you want to know what changed last week, there is you know information that shows you what changed last week There's a cohort
Adam Parks (21:04)
and other is the value that. So you're talking to other people and you can ask questions and the recordings are out there in the description for you to to recordings and you say, oh, I missed that one and a half weeks ago, that was about this subject. It's out there and it's available to you. It's the crisis.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (21:22)
⁓ So you're talking to other people and you know, can ask questions and the recordings are out there You know in the subscription for you to go and listen to these recordings if you see I missed that one a couple weeks ago. That was about this subject It's out there and it's available to you. ⁓ It's it's priceless
Adam Parks (21:41)
I didn't even think to mention all of those other ancillary pieces that really do add to the overall value. And maybe it's because the subscription is so inexpensive that it's kind of a no brainer for most organizations, because it's hard to pick up the phone and call a lawyer for less than the cost of that annual subscription, plus all of the additional information and making it accessible to more people within your organization versus you being that centralized point of contact illegal because you're trying to control costs. But really, I've found in my experience, empowering the rest of my team really does limit how much time unnecessary things take up on my calendar. I'm sure you can appreciate that. So Pam, as we kind of wrap up our conversation, any final advice for our audience or anything else that you'd like to tell us about the ACA State Guide and your experience with it?
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (22:19)
Amen to No, I just want to thank ACA because they truly did listen to their members, me being one of them. And I know that I hounded them for a while and they came through and I really appreciate what they've done for their membership and what they've done for our industry, quite frankly, because this is showing that our industry wants to do the right thing. We want to be proactive when it comes to compliance and they're leading the way. So kudos to ACA.
Adam Parks (23:00)
Well, I greatly appreciate you coming on sharing your insights. I definitely appreciate the ACA team and all the hard work that I know goes into building a structured data product like this and trying to call it rain in the chaos that is the regulatory environment around the debt collection industry. But for those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd like to ask Pam or myself, you can leave those in the comments below as well. Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss. You can leave those in the comments below as well. And I'll bet I can get Pam back here at least one more time to help me continue to create great content for a great industry. But until next time, Pam, I really do appreciate all your insights and look forward to seeing you again soon.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (23:40)
Thank you so much, Adam.
Adam Parks (23:41)
Absolutely. And thank you everybody for watching. We appreciate your time and attention and we'll talk to you soon. Bye everyone.
PAMELA E KIRCHNER (23:47)
Thank you. Bye bye.
