Decedent Account Recovery: The Gap Your Metrics Were Never Built To Show

Most problems in your collections operation announce themselves. You get a complaint. A service level slips. Numbers move the wrong way and someone wants an explanation by Monday. You get the idea.

Uncollected decedent balances announce nothing. They generate no exception report, no variance, no escalation. They sit in an inventory that was never assembled, and every report you run comes back clean. That silence is why this gap survives inside well-managed organizations. Over time, this is shaping up to be a serious issue. Baby Boomers (ages 62-80) have an average individual debt of over $92,000, according to Experian.

Clean Numbers Are Not Complete Numbers

Look at how your recovery performance gets calculated. Dollars recovered, divided by the accounts in your working inventory. Now look at what sits in that denominator: Accounts you identified. Accounts that triggered the collections process. Accounts someone got assigned. An estate that opened in a jurisdiction you never searched is not in there. A balance tied to a death your scrub failed to match is not in there. An account where no estate ever opened, but assets still exist, is not in there.

The painful truth is that your rate holds steady because the hardest accounts were never counted against it.

Then the incentive turns strange. Add those accounts to your inventory and your percentage can fall even as your dollars climb. Go looking for issues like this and the scoreboard penalizes you. Do nothing and you post another solid quarter. So where does that leave you?

The Question Has No Owner

These balances cross too many desks to belong to any individual. Servicing considers the account resolved. Finance considers the loss booked. Recovery works with what it receives. Compliance monitors how contact happens, not whether it happens at all. So the question "how much are we failing to find" belongs to nobody, and questions without owners do not get asked.

The accounting reinforces it. Once a balance is written off, the pain stops. Organizations respond to pain. This one quit hurting the day it was reserved. It’s not even considered what could be accomplished with a little proactivity and the right partner.

What You Gain By Asking Anyway

Almost every improvement you can champion requires money. New headcount, new platform, new budget cycle, new business case, new competition with three other priorities.

This one moves the opposite direction. These balances are already written down. Whatever comes back lands as margin. You are not asking anyone to fund a discovery.

The discovery itself stays small and reversible. Run a portion of your inventory against nationwide court records and see what surfaces. Maybe the answer is modest. That is still worth knowing, and it cost you a conversation. Maybe the answer is substantial, and you just delivered revenue that no forecast anticipated.

Use What You Find to Change What You Count

Your reporting rate starts with total dollars recovered. However, then you add a metric most organizations never track: identification coverage. What share of your deceased inventory did you actually locate, and how long did locating it take? Coverage exposes what rate conceals. An organization finding 40 percent of its decedent accounts and recovering aggressively on them has a very different future than one finding 90 percent. The rate can look identical. The dollars will not. Measuring the coverage can shine a light on the gap.

Help Closing the Gap

Running your current reports harder will not identify these gaps. They were built to measure the work you assigned, and this is work for which nobody was assigned. It surfaces when someone decides to ask “how much is out there unrecovered?” You are in a position to be that someone.

DCM Services helps organizations answer that question with nationwide court access and technology built specifically for decedent account recovery. Contact us and we will show you what your inventory actually holds.

In-House vs. Outsourced Collections: When Does It Make Sense to Bring in a Partner?

Every collections leader eventually reaches the same fork in the road. Delinquent accounts keep climbing. Compliance requirements keep multiplying. Recovery rates plateau or slip. This is especially crucial for the kinds of specialty accounts we at DCM Services handle, such as decedent estate/probated accounts, bankruptcies, etc. At some point, leadership must decide whether the current team can handle what comes next, or whether it's time to bring in outside expertise. With The U.S. debt collection industry reaching an estimated $30.19 billion in market size in 2025, projected to grow to $31.2 billion in 2026 at 3.4% CAGR, this question is more important than ever.

Fundamentally, this decision affects lenders, healthcare systems, utilities, auto finance companies, and any organization that manages past-due accounts. Getting it right protects revenue, reduces compliance risk, and keeps customer relationships intact.

The True Cost of Managing Collections In-House

Running collections internally costs far more than salaries. Every agent needs training on rules that vary by state and change often. Skip tracing, dialing, and payment technology require continuous investment to stay current and compliant. Compliance monitoring, audit trails, and legal review add administrative weight that grows heavier as portfolios scale.

Hidden costs add up fast, too. Collections roles see high turnover, and every departure means retraining a replacement. A single compliance violation can trigger fines and litigation that outweigh years of savings from keeping work in-house. And every hour spent working aged or low-balance accounts is an hour your team can't spend on higher-value priorities.

Where Internal Teams Create the Most Value

Internal teams still earn their place. Early-stage delinquency often responds best to a direct, relationship-based approach. Your staff already knows the account history and can tailor outreach without straining the customer relationship. The problem arises when specialty accounts start to eat into missed recovery opportunities, as we’ve covered in a previous article.

The overall rule of thumb, however, says that high-value accounts and situations that require careful, brand-conscious handling also belong in-house. Keeping core recovery work internal preserves institutional knowledge and gives leadership direct visibility into daily performance. The real work is matching each account segment to the team best equipped to handle it.

Signs a Portfolio Has Outgrown Its Current Model

Certain issues suggest your current collections model can't keep up:

• Aged receivables grow faster than your team can work them.

• Recovery rates decline even as headcount increases.

• Compliance obligations span more states or account types than your staff can track with confidence.

• Specialty accounts, such as probate, estate, or bankruptcy claims, require expertise your team doesn't have.

• Leadership spends more time managing collections risk than growing the business.

Experiencing one of these issues deserves attention. Experiencing Several together mean the model itself likely needs to change.

The Case for Specialized External Expertise

A specialized collections partner offers more than extra staff. Purpose-built technology automates tasks like deceased-account identification, skip tracing, and compliance checks at every touchpoint. Dedicated compliance infrastructure keeps pace with a regulatory landscape that shifts constantly across jurisdictions.

Focus matters, too. Recovery is a specialized partner's core business, not one priority competing for internal budget and attention. For complex account types like probate and estate resolution or bankruptcy servicing, a partner with dedicated processes and deep case volume often delivers stronger outcomes than a generalist internal team.

How to Evaluate Expected ROI

A true ROI calculation looks past the vendor invoice. Consider:

• Recovery rate lift- Compare a partner's liquidation rate against current internal performance on similar accounts.

• Cost per dollar recovered- Include staff time, technology, training, and compliance overhead alongside the vendor fee.

• Compliance risk reduction- Weigh the cost of a single violation or lawsuit against the price of prevention.

• Opportunity cost- Estimate what your team could accomplish if freed from accounts a partner could manage instead.

A strong partner shares performance data openly and welcomes a pilot program before a full portfolio transition.

Building an Effective Internal and External Collections Model

The strongest collections strategies rarely rely on one approach. They combine both.

Keep early-stage and high-touch accounts in-house, where relationship and judgment carry the most weight. Route aged, specialty, and high-compliance-risk accounts to a partner built for that work. Set clear service level agreements and reporting cadences so both sides stay accountable. Revisit the split regularly, since portfolios and regulations change over time.

Deciding between in-house and outsourced collections comes down to fit. Take stock of your portfolio today. Identify where your team excels, where risk is building, and where a specialized partner could create real value for your organization and your customers.

If you think your organization might benefit from outsourcing a collections partner that specializes in recovering what in-house teams aren’t equipped to handle from a logistic or compliance standpoint, contact us! We’ll be happy to assess your situation and see where any gaps are.

DCM Services Adds AKUVO as Strategic Partner to Expand Proactive Estate Recovery for Credit Unions

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 11, 2026 — DCM Services (DCMS), the industry leader in estate account resolution, has officially partnered with AKUVO, a leading intelligent collections and credit risk platform built for banks, credit unions and fintechs. The partnership expands what AKUVO's financial institution customers can do with decedent and probate accounts, giving them a more proactive path to recovery. 

Estate recovery moves on probate timelines, and by the time a missed payment surfaces, the filing window may already be closing. Through this partnership, DCMS joins AKUVO's growing partner ecosystem, bringing specialized expertise in early identification, state-specific compliance, and timely claim filing to AKUVO's Platform. The result is a more proactive recovery process for AKUVO's customers, replacing reactive account handling with earlier, better-informed action. 

"This partnership lets us bring DCM Services' specialized estate recovery expertise directly into the workflow AKUVO's bank and credit union customers already rely on, so a missed payment triggers action instead of a write-off," said Michael Rosenthal, Chief Executive Officer of DCM Services. "As the population ages and more institutions face a growing volume of decedent accounts, the old model of treating estate recovery as a generalist collections task is no longer sustainable. AKUVO and DCM Services are leading that shift, and we expect the rest of the industry to follow." 

"Our goal is to connect the expertise financial institutions need with the workflows they use every day," said Mike Ruggiero, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at AKUVO. "By bringing DCM Services into the AKUVO ecosystem, we're helping banks and credit unions address decedent accounts earlier, with greater visibility and confidence, while improving outcomes across the recovery process." 

Founded in 1998, DCMS provides a comprehensive range of probate and estate-specific recovery services, spanning proprietary web-based solutions to full outsourcing. Unlike traditional collections agencies, DCMS focuses exclusively on the unique needs of estate and probate account resolution, working to maximize estate portfolio values while maintaining the highest levels of respect and sensitivity for families and individuals who have experienced loss. 

AKUVO helps banks, credit unions, and fintechs modernize collections with a unified platform that combines predictive intelligence, AI-assisted decision support, digital engagement, and workflow automation. Built on a large-scale collections data foundation, AKUVO enables financial institutions to improve efficiency, identify risk earlier, and drive better outcomes across the collections lifecycle. Through its partnership with DCMS, AKUVO extends these capabilities to include decedent and probate account resolution. 

About DCM Services

DCM Services (DCMS) the industry leader in estate account resolution, providing probate and estate specific recovery solutions since 1998. Unlike traditional collections agencies, DCMS focuses exclusively on estate and probate account resolution, helping financial institutions and healthcare organizations navigate a complex, sensitive process with compliance and care.

About AKUVO

AKUVO is a leading provider of cloud-native collections software solutions that elevate how banks, credit unions, and fintechs collect and manage their portfolios via its products. Whether it is through their stand-alone virtual collector, or its next-generation collections platform, AKUVO provides the technology and data necessary to increase collections efficiency, provide a digital consumer experience, reduce staff costs, anticipate delinquencies, and provide insight into future credit decisions. AKUVO delivers a digital future for collections and account performance management with a visionary, behavior-based approach while taking full advantage of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and machine learning. Learn more about AKUVO at akuvo.com. 

Source: PR Newswire

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Building a Specialty Account Strategy Reduces Delinquency and Maximizes Recovery Revenue

Every delinquent account looks the same sitting in a queue, but in reality, they aren’t the same and shouldn’t be treated as such. Some accounts belong to a borrower who missed a payment and will catch up on their own. Others belong to an estate, a bankruptcy trustee, or a family member who never expected to inherit a debt. Treating all of them the same way will create a situation where recovery slows while cost per account climbs.

See our recent article: The Hidden Cost of Treating Every Delinquent Account the Same: Why Specialty Collections Matter

A deliberate specialty account strategy does the opposite. It identifies these accounts early, routes them to the right process, and treats them as a distinct part of the portfolio instead of an exception. Done well, it's one of the more direct ways an organization can simultaneously reduce delinquency and maximize recovery revenue.

Understanding The Lifecycle of a Consumer Account

Most collections strategies are built around a predictable curve: current, early-stage delinquency, late-stage delinquency, charge-off, and post charge-off recovery. Segmentation by days past due, an escalating contact cadence, and settlement offers that grow more flexible as the account ages all assume the account will keep moving along that curve. The portfolio-level delinquency rate can obscure meaningful differences between borrower segments, though. The latest Federal Reserve analysis, for example, attributes much of the recent increase in credit-card delinquency to nonprime borrowers.

That predictable model works for a straightforward delinquency. However, it breaks down the moment a specialty condition enters the picture. A death, a bankruptcy filing, or active military deployment interrupts that standard curve. An account can look completely normal in a report and still be unrecoverable through standard channels, or recoverable only through a different one entirely.

Where Specialty Conditions Emerge

Specialty conditions rarely arrive with a flag attached.

• A borrower may pass away and the account will sit untouched, potentially for months, before anyone notifies the servicer.

• A bankruptcy petition triggers an automatic stay that ordinary collections activity can violate without anyone realizing it.

• A cardholder enters active duty and gains protections under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

• A dispute changes what can legally be said, and to whom.

These conditions can surface at any point in the lifecycle: before charge-off, after charge-off, or even years into a placement with a third-party agency. The cost of missing one isn't limited to lost revenue. Continuing standard collections activity against an estate, a bankruptcy filing, or a protected servicemember creates real compliance issues, and potentially reputational exposure if collections efforts aren’t done with the compassion necessary to speak to familial estate executors.

Identifying the Right Intervention Point to Reduce Delinquency

Catching specialty conditions early is what actually moves delinquency numbers rather than waiting for a complaint or a returned letter which forces the issue. That means building detection into the process itself: routine scrubs against death records and probate filings, bankruptcy court data, and other public and licensed sources, rather than waiting for a condition to surface on its own.

Timing changes what's recoverable as well. A probate matter identified within weeks of a death can often be resolved through the estate's court-supervised process. The same matter identified months later may run into missed claims deadlines or a depleted estate. Late identification can close the door on recovering those balances completely.

Matching Account Characteristics to the Right Recovery Strategy

Not every specialty account calls for the same treatment, either. A probated estate with a named executor needs compliant, respectful communication with an authorized representative, not a standard collections script. A bankruptcy account needs proof-of-claim filing and case monitoring, not contact attempts. What matters is account type, portfolio size, and how much of the process an organization wants to manage in-house versus hand to a specialty partner.

That's why solutions in this space tend to fall into a few categories:

• Self-service tools that let internal staff run their own research and keep recovery in-house

• Full-service programs that manage resolution across probated and non-probated estates end to end

• Dedicated servicing built around requirements like the bankruptcy lifecycle.

Matching the right category to the right account, instead of defaulting to one approach for everything, is what turns a specialty portfolio into a source of recovery revenue rather than a drag on it.

Balancing Automation with Human Judgment

Automation has clearly earned its place in specialty account work. Scanning probate filings and public records at scale, flagging date-of-death matches, and routing accounts by condition type are jobs technology handles faster and more consistently than a person can, assuming you have the right software. Our Probate Finder OnDemand® app, for example, is our in-house, proprietary automated solution.

Judgment still belongs to a person, however. Deciding how to approach a grieving family member, interpreting an ambiguous probate filing, or determining whether a bankruptcy discharge actually covers a specific account requires context no rules engine has. The organizations that get the best results treat automation as the intake and triage layer, and reserve trained staff for the parts of the process where tone, compliance judgment, and relationship handling decide the outcome.

Creating a Scalable Specialty Collections Program

A specialty account strategy only pays off if it can grow with the portfolio. That takes documented workflows for each specialty type, data sources that get refreshed on a schedule instead of checked once, and reporting that separates specialty recovery performance from standard delinquency metrics so the program's real return is visible.

It also takes a deliberate decision about what to build internally and what to source from a partner who already carries the licensing, the data relationships, and the compliance controls this work requires. Organizations across financial services, auto lending, mortgage servicing, and healthcare are all managing some volume of specialty accounts today. The ones treating it as a defined program, rather than an exception queue, are the ones seeing it reduce delinquency and maximize recovery revenue instead of quietly eroding both.

Ready to Build a Specialty Account Strategy?

Specialty accounts aren't going away. The only real question is whether they're identified early, routed correctly, and resolved by the right mix of technology and trained judgment, or left to work themselves out in a standard collections queue where they don't belong. If it's time to look at what a specialty account strategy could do for your portfolio, contact us to talk it through.

Probate Collections Start with Finding the Estate

For banks, credit unions, and consumer lenders, probate collections often begin too late.

When a borrower passes, the account does eventually get flagged. However, by the time someone checks whether an estate exists, where it was opened, who the estate executor(s) are, whether a claim can be filed, and what the applicable court requirements are, it’s usually after filing deadlines have passed and the account gets written off.

This sequence creates an avoidable problem: probate collections depend on timely estate identification, but many lenders still treat estate research as a “when we get to it” task. A more effective approach starts by making probate identification an integral part of the account lifecycle.

Probate Collections Require a Different Process

Traditional collections practices work because most accounts follow a relatively predictable path. Specialty accounts, including estates, bankruptcies, and conservatorships do not. These accounts can become subject to processes that vary not only by individual circumstance, but also by legal jurisdiction. The CFPB notes that a deceased person's debts are generally paid from the estate, while responsibility for managing those debts may fall to an executor, administrator, personal representative, or another authorized person under applicable law. 

That means a lender cannot simply transfer a deceased account to a conventional collections queue and expect the same process to work. The organization needs to answer different questions, such as:

• Where was the estate opened?

• Who is authorized to act for the estate?

• Can we file a claim before the deadline?

• What court requirements apply to this account?

• How will we monitor the account during resolution?

Finding Probate Estates is Just The First Problem

For many lenders, especially credit unions managing thousands of member accounts, the practical challenge isn't knowing that probate exists, but rather finding the estate among a large portfolio of accounts.

Manual research can require staff to search court records, identify potential matches, verify estate information, and determine whether an account belongs to the estate. The work becomes more difficult when lenders operate across multiple jurisdictions.

That is why probate estate identification deserves its own place in the recovery strategy.

Our  Probate Finder OnDemand® service, for example, is designed specifically to automate probated estate location, matching, and claim presentation. The platform provides nationwide probate visibility and uses our proprietary Probate Finder technology to reduce reliance on manual, court-by-court research.

Why Credit Unions in Particular Should Pay Close Attention

Credit unions have another reason to examine this process closely: member relationships can make specialty-account handling especially sensitive. A credit union may want to preserve the member relationship with surviving family members while still fulfilling its responsibilities as a creditor. That requires a process that not only distinguishes the deceased borrower from the person authorized to manage the estate but does so with compassion and empathy.

Federal guidance reinforces the importance of that borrower vs. estate representative distinction. The CFPB explains that debt collectors may communicate about a deceased consumer's debt with people authorized to act for the estate, while they generally cannot treat family members as personally responsible for the deceased person's debt. 

For credit unions, that makes accurate estate identification more than a recovery exercise. It becomes part of a controlled process for determining who the organization should communicate with and how the account should move forward.

Finding the Estate Is Only the Beginning.

Once an estate is located, lenders still need to determine whether a claim is appropriate, prepare the necessary information, submit it through the applicable process, and monitor the account through resolution. Our probate technology works constantly to perform deceased-account identification, which results in our signature service being able to ensure quick estate location, thorough claim validation, timely filing, and ongoing monitoring. Learn more about these processes on our product page.

Build Probate Collections Into the Account Lifecycle

Between our probate recovery solutions, and Probate Finder OnDemand® for organizations that want to maintain aspects of recovery internally, we strive to be flexible for any size organization. A large bank may want an end-to-end outsourced solution, but credit unions and smaller lenders may want to retain control of internal collections operations while adding specialized probate research capabilities.

For organizations still treating probate research as an exception handled after someone notices a deceased account, we urge you to contact us and start a discussion around how we can potentially help your bottom line and at a substantial ROI.

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 FAQ

• 1. What are probate collections?

  Probate collections are the process of recovering debt from a deceased borrower's estate through the applicable probate or estate administration process. For lenders, this can involve identifying the estate, determining who is authorized to act for it, validating the creditor's claim, filing required documentation, and monitoring the account through resolution.

• 2. How do lenders find a probate estate?

  Lenders can identify probate estates through court-record research, estate databases, and specialized probate research technology. Automated probate searches can help lenders match deceased borrowers to active estates and reduce the need for manual, court-by-court research.

• 3. Why are probate collections different from traditional collections?

  Probate collections require lenders to work through an estate rather than simply communicate with the borrower. The lender may need to identify an authorized representative, follow court procedures, meet jurisdiction-specific requirements, and monitor the estate through resolution. These differences make probate accounts a type of specialty account that requires a different workflow.

• 4. How can lenders identify accounts that need specialty collections?

  Lenders can establish specific triggers that route accounts out of traditional collections when a significant legal or life event changes how the account should be handled. Examples can include a borrower's death, bankruptcy, guardianship or conservatorship, power of attorney, or other circumstances that affect the parties authorized to act on an account.

• 5. Can lenders automate probate research?

  Yes. Lenders can use specialized probate research technology to automate processes such as deceased-borrower identification, estate location, borrower-to-estate matching, and other research tasks. Automation can help financial institutions identify potential probate accounts more consistently and reduce manual research.

• 6. How do credit unions manage probate collections?

  Credit unions can incorporate probate collections into their specialty-account workflows rather than handling each deceased-member account as an isolated exception. A defined process can help credit unions identify estates, determine the appropriate representative, meet applicable requirements, and preserve a consistent member experience while pursuing legitimate recovery.

• 7. When should a lender consider outsourcing probate collections?

  A lender may consider outsourcing probate collections when estate research, jurisdictional requirements, claim filing, or account monitoring exceed its internal resources or expertise. Another option is to keep recovery operations in-house while using specialized technology to automate probate estate identification and research.