Partnerships

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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The Probate Recovery Gap: Why Leading A/R Providers Are Partnering to Close It

Author: Dawn Radecki - Director of Strategic Alliance at DCM Services

An Overlooked Problem Hiding in Plain Sight

Every RCM organization, utility solution provider, and financial services platform encounters deceased-account balances. And in nearly every case, those accounts follow the same path: flagged, set aside, written off. Not because the money is unrecoverable, but because probate recovery demands specialized expertise, such as state-specific legal knowledge, court filing timelines, compassionate family engagement. These all fall well outside standard A/R responsibilities.

The result is a quiet but persistent revenue leak, compounded by compliance exposure and the reputational risk of mishandling sensitive communications with families and estates.

Why This Is Becoming a Strategic Priority

Three trends are pushing probate recovery up the priority list. Regulatory scrutiny around deceased-account handling is tightening across healthcare, utilities, and financial services. Clients increasingly expect end-to-end solutions from their vendors — and a gap in estate recovery is becoming a competitive vulnerability. And as portfolios grow and the population ages, the volume of these accounts is only increasing.

Organizations that address this now gain a differentiation advantage. Those that don’t will find the gap harder to explain to prospects who are asking about it.

Deceased-account recovery is one of the most overlooked revenue opportunities in accounts receivable, and the organizations solving it aren’t building from scratch.

Why the Smart Move Is a Partnership, Not an In-House Build

Building probate recovery in-house means hiring niche legal expertise across fifty states, developing compliance frameworks from scratch, and training staff for an entirely different kind of engagement. It’s a multi-year investment with a steep learning curve.

Partnering with a specialist eliminates that ramp-up. Through resell, referral, or strategic alignment models, organizations can embed probate-focused expertise into their offering with minimal operational disruption. This ensures you simultaneously recover incremental revenue, strengthen your compliance position, and protect client brands without adding complexity to their teams.

The best providers know when to build and when to partner. For deceased-account recovery, the answer is clear.


DCM Services is the industry leader in estate and specialty account resolution. To explore partnership opportunities, contact us at info@dcmservices.com.