The Borrower Lifecycle Continues When Account Holders Pass Away

Financial services leaders should treat these instances as a predictable part of portfolio management rather than an exception

Financial services organizations have become incredibly sophisticated at almost every stage of the customer lifecycle. Between investing heavily in acquiring customers, underwriting them, servicing their accounts, identifying risk, managing delinquencies, and recovering losses, it's a complex, but well-oiled machine.

But there is one part of the lifecycle that doesn't always receive the same strategic attention: “What happens when a customer passes away?”

While that may sound like a narrow operational question, it's actually a much broader leadership question. Simply put, customers will inevitably pass away. It is a natural part of life. And while the customer relationship changes, the financial obligations and administrative responsibilities associated with an account don't simply disappear. This is a predictable part of managing a consumer portfolio. So, with that in mind, why do we still treat these accounts like exceptions?

Complexity isn't a good reason to accept a poor process

One explanation is that resolving accounts following a customer's passing can be complicated, and that's a fair point. An organization may need to determine when the customer passed away, whether an estate has been established, who is authorized to represent that estate, whether a claim can be filed, what deadlines apply, which jurisdiction rules govern the process, and more.

The regulatory framework recognizes that this is different from ordinary collections. For example, Regulation F treats an executor, administrator, or personal representative of an estate as the person who can act on behalf of the estate in relevant debt-collection communications, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. There is a lot to get right, but Complexity motivates us to understand the process better and is not a reason to stop improving.

When something is difficult, the natural organizational response is often to push it into an exception queue:

• "Someone else will handle it."

• "We'll review it when it becomes delinquent."

• "We'll research it manually."

• "We'll deal with it when we have time."

Eventually, some of those accounts become write-offs because a reactive process never identified them or attempted to collect on them in time. That's an important distinction, and it's also the underlying problem.

Estate accounts aren't simply a collections issue

It’s arguably a mistake to view accounts following a customer's passing strictly through the lens of collections. While there is certainly a financial component, legitimate obligations don't disappear simply because a customer has passed away. The process also involves data, technology, compliance, operations, and the customer experience.

Most importantly, it involves people who may be navigating one of the most difficult periods of their lives. The goal should never be to treat a grieving family member like an ordinary delinquent customer. The goal is to identify the right party, understand the estate, follow the applicable requirements, and resolve the account correctly. That distinction is crucial with estate accounts. It is possible to protect the financial interests of an organization while treating surviving family members and estate representatives with respect. We do it every day at DCM Services; performance and compassion are both measures of whether we've designed the process correctly.

Technology should help us see what we can't see manually

Today’s technology can make a meaningful difference with artificial intelligence and automation. Much of it focuses on replacing manual tasks or reducing headcount. There is another, sometimes more valuable, application of technology revolving around the discovery of important work opportunities that humans would otherwise never see.

Consider a traditional estate-recovery process. An organization may know that some of its customers have passed away. But knowing that isn't enough. The organization needs to identify the relevant estate, determine whether recovery is appropriate, understand where that estate is in the process, and act within applicable timeframes.

That can become extremely difficult to do by hand, much less scale. Technology can change the equation by making identification more systematic. At DCM Services, for example, our technology is designed to automate date-of-passing verification and identify probated estates using a nationwide probate database. That allows organizations to move from manually searching for opportunities to systematically identifying them.

But technology alone isn't the answer. A bad process automated is still a bad process. The real opportunity comes from combining technology with specialized expertise, tight project management, compliance controls, and training employees to understand how to handle these situations with care.

A 7,500% lesson in operational thinking

We at DCM Services recently saw a particularly striking example of what can happen when an organization changes the way it approaches this problem.

A mid-size credit union client using DCM Service's Probate Finder OnDemand® technology generated $1.86 million in probate claims during its first year and reported a 7,500% return on their investment. One partial month of settlements was enough to cover a full year of the service. Those are impressive numbers, but the most interesting part isn't the results themselves, rather the ideas, processes, and technology that made the numbers possible. Read the full case study here.

Every organization has processes that have become so familiar that people stop questioning them. Everyone knows they're manual and inefficient. Everyone knows there are probably missed opportunities. But because the process has always worked well enough, it doesn't make its way to the top of the executive agenda. That is, until someone changes the process and discovers how much value was sitting behind it.

The executive questions financial services organizations should be asking

Not every financial institution needs to build the same estate-recovery operation, but but every organization managing consumer accounts should understand what happens when their account holder passes away.

And that starts with asking some basic questions:

• "How quickly do we know when a customer passes away?"

• "What happens to that account after we know?"

• "Who owns the process?"

• "How do we determine whether an estate exists?"

• "How do we identify the right representative?"

• "How do we make sure we're acting within the applicable requirements and deadlines?"

• "How much recoverable value are we currently writing off because our process doesn't identify it in time?"

Working through these questions will likely surface gaps in your organization's workflows and technology. That's often the stage we find clients in when they first reach out to us.

A more complete view of the customer lifecycle

The front end of the customer lifecycle has become increasingly sophisticated over the last few decades, understandably. But there is still a process to manage, value to protect, and compliance requirements to meet. And of course, there are still grieving people on the other side of the process who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Organizations that approach these accounts with that mindset will be better positioned to manage risk, protect revenue, and deliver a more thoughtful experience. How an organization handles the difficult and sensitive moments in a customer relationship often tells you how mature its overall operation really is.

So the next time your leadership team reviews the customer lifecycle, add one question to the agenda:

"What happens when one of our customers passes away?"

If the answer is complicated, that's okay. Complexity isn't the problem. The question is whether you're willing to build a better way to manage it, with the right balance of technology, expertise, performance, and compassion. If so, contact us today and we’ll get you what you need to significantly boost your estate collections revenue!

Credit Card Issuers Are Writing Off Recoverable Decedent Debt

Every credit card issuer eventually runs into the same scenario: a cardholder dies, the estate executor doesn’t notify the credit bureaus, the account goes delinquent, and after a few collection attempts go nowhere, the balance gets charged off as a loss, or a “cost of doing business.” But a meaningful share of that "loss" is often recoverable through proper estate recovery. Issuers who default to writing off decedent accounts instead of proactively identifying them through structured decedent account collections are leaving real revenue on the table, right as the volume of this problem is set to grow.

Debt Payoff Responsibility is up to The Estate

Roughly 73% of Americans who die leave behind some form of debt, according to a widely cited Experian/Debt.org study, with the average unpaid balance sitting over $60,000. Credit card debt is the most common type carried into death, with 68% of deceased individuals having an outstanding credit card balance at the time they pass.

For an issuer, this means decedent accounts are a routine, sizable, and recurring category of potential receivables. The challenge is that most conventional collections infrastructure isn't built for this scenario. Standard dunning/delinquent letters, calls, and automated collection workflows are designed for living, contactable borrowers, not for estates, their executors, or probate courts. When conventional collections attempts go nowhere, many issuers simply charge the account off rather than shifting into a proper estate recovery process. This closes the door on a claim that may still have been legally recoverable.

Conventional Collections Doesn’t Work for Estates

Pursuing a deceased cardholder's balance through the same channels used for an active, delinquent borrower creates two problems at once. First, it's usually ineffective. An estate executor isn't going to respond to the same call scripts and letters a living cardholder would, and staff without probate expertise often don't know who the legally responsible party even is. Second, it carries real compliance exposure. Contacting surviving family members about a deceased cardholder's debt is governed by rules that differ from standard FDCPA and Regulation F treatment of living consumers, and missteps here create reputational and legal risk that outweighs the balances being pursued.

The result is a pattern seen across the industry: accounts sit in conventional collections too long, miss the state-specific probate claim-filing windows that would have made them recoverable, and then eventually get charged off. The debt was collectible, but because it wasn't pursued the right way, at the right time, through the right channel, it was written off and lost forever.

Demographic Shifts Make This a Bigger Issue

This is a growing issue for consumer lenders in general. The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) most recent Demographic Outlook projects that 2030 will mark the point at which U.S. deaths outpace births, meaning the "natural" population (births minus deaths) is projected to turn negative, with immigration becoming the only source of population growth. Put simply: the number of Americans dying each year is on a sustained upward trajectory.

For a credit card issuer, that trend translates directly into portfolio risk. As the volume of cardholder deaths rises, so does the volume of decedent accounts moving into collections. Issuers who are still relying on conventional, reactive collections treatment for these accounts aren't just missing recoverable revenue today, they're building that inefficiency into a growing share of their portfolio for years to come. The issuers who get ahead of this now, by building a dedicated estate recovery and decedent account collections process, will be better positioned than those still treating it as a rounding error in the charge-off line.

How DCM Services Helps Issuers Recover What Conventional Collections Misses

This is the specific gap DCM Services closes for credit card issuers. Rather than routing decedent accounts through the same processes as standard delinquencies, we identify decedent and probate accounts early with our proprietary software, manage the state-by-state regulatory requirements that govern estate claims, and file within the windows that determine whether a balance is recoverable at all. Plusc we handle it all without adding headcount or legal risk to your team.

We've applied this same approach for other financial institutions with measurable results: a large Midwestern credit union that shifted from reactive, in-house estate recovery to a proactive DCM-managed program saw a 7,500% return on investment. You can read that case study here: Fix Reactive Estate Recovery Processes and Watch Your Revenue Increase.

As cardholder deaths rise in the years ahead, the issuers who build a proactive estate recovery function now will recover materially more than those still writing decedent debt off by default.

Contact us to find out how much recoverable revenue may already be sitting in your charge-off portfolio!

The Probate Recovery Strategy Behind Significant Revenue Growth

Managing decedent accounts is one of the more overlooked and complicated revenue opportunities in financial services. Staying compliant across multiple states, identifying accounts efficiently, and training staff to handle estate conversations with care are challenges most institutions face without dedicated resources. DCM Services was recently featured in Global Banking and Finance Review exploring exactly how our probate recovery capabilities address all three, and what that means for your bottom line. Contact us to learn how we can build a tailored recovery plan for you!

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The Overlooked Banking Challenge Hidden Inside Probate Recovery

When a borrower dies, most institutions know how to close the loop on the account administratively. The harder question is what to do financially. In many cases, the answer is to write the balance off and move on. Not because there is no path to recovery, but because the path that does exist is messy, manual, and easy to miss. Probate is full of deadlines, court rules, filing requirements, and local variations that do not fit neatly into a standard collections workflow. DCM Services describes estate account resolution as a specialized process involving probate verification, compliant research, and communication with authorized representatives, rather than traditional consumer collections.

That distinction matters more than it may appear. Once an account becomes estate-related, the work changes. The institution is no longer simply managing a receivable, but instead it is navigating a court-supervised process that may require verifying a date of death, locating an open estate, matching the account correctly, filing a claim on time, and following the matter through to resolution. This process is governed by federal, state, and court-specific requirements, which is part of the reason many organizations struggle to handle it consistently at scale.

Why Probate Falls Through the Cracks

Probate recovery is one of those functions that is easy to underestimate until an organization tries to do it across a large portfolio. Court systems are decentralized, records are not standardized and deadlines vary. In some cases, the information needed to preserve a claim exists, but not in a form that can be easily found or acted on by a lender’s internal team. The result is that balances with real recovery potential are sometimes treated as unrecoverable simply because the process around them is too difficult to manage manually. Specialty probate collections require jurisdiction-specific knowledge, accurate estate identification, timely filing, and ongoing monitoring.

This is the overlooked part of the conversation. The challenge is not always a lack of assets. Often, it is a lack of infrastructure. If an estate is open and the deadlines are still active, recovery may be possible. But if no one has the tools or internal specialization to identify that opportunity in time, the account is effectively lost.

Probate is far from a niche legal process. According to the National Center for State Courts, probate and estate-related filings account for hundreds of thousands of court cases annually across the United States, reflecting the scale and operational complexity involved in estate administration and creditor claims.

A Different Kind of Servicing Model

This is where firms such as DCM Services have carved out a role. The company focuses specifically on probate, estate, and other specialty accounts, and its approach is powered by patented technologies and a nationwide probate database. The company’s Probate Finder technology covers more than 10.2 million probated estate records across 3,400-plus probate courts in the United States, while its DOD Finder database cross-references date-of-death information from the Social Security Administration, Probate Finder, and other sources.

That kind of infrastructure changes the economics of the problem. Instead of treating deceased accounts as edge cases that sit outside normal operations, institutions can begin to manage them as a defined category with its own workflows, controls, and performance expectations. This capability enables the creation of new or increased revenue streams while preserving brand integrity through compliant, empathetic account handling.

The operational burden surrounding probate is also significant. According to a survey from EstateExec, many estates take between six months and two years to settle depending on court timelines, creditor claims, and jurisdiction-specific requirements.

Compassion is Not Separate from Compliance

One reason this area is so easy to mishandle is that it sits at the intersection of legal process and human experience. The person receiving a notice or a phone call is often an executor, administrator, or family member already dealing with grief and paperwork. That makes tone just as important as timing.

Mike Rosenthal, CEO of DCM Services, has been vocal about that balance. His view is that institutions should not have to choose between recovering what is legitimately owed and treating people decently. In practice, that means approaching probate recovery as a process of resolution, not pressure and helping authorized representatives understand what needs to happen, while ensuring the creditor’s rights are preserved. The difference is respectful communication with verified executors and authorized representatives, as well as a compassionate and empathetic approach to recoveries.

That is not just a matter of brand language. It reflects the reality of the work. Mishandled outreach after a death can create reputational damage quickly, particularly for banks and lenders that depend on trust. By the same token, a recovery strategy that is so cautious it avoids probate altogether can leave meaningful value on the table. The challenge is to do both well: act promptly and act appropriately.

Why This Matters to Banking Now

For financial institutions, this issue is becoming harder to ignore. Deceased-account servicing may not be the most visible line item in receivables management, but it sits in a category that touches operations, compliance, customer experience, and revenue recovery all at once. This challenge appears anywhere an unpaid balance outlives the original account holder.

The institutions that get ahead of it are likely to be the ones that stop thinking of probate as a one-off legal issue and start treating it as a specialized operational discipline. That shift matters because once probate is understood as a workflow problem with data, deadlines, ownership, and accountability, it becomes much easier to see how much has historically been overlooked.

The importance of estate-related financial servicing is also expected to grow significantly over the coming decades. Research from Cerulli Associates estimates that approximately $84 trillion in wealth is projected to transfer between generations and to charities through 2045 in what is often described as the “Great Wealth Transfer.”

The Bigger Takeaway

There is a tendency in financial services to think of death as the end of the account lifecycle. In reality, it is often the beginning of a different kind of process—one that is slower, more regulated, and far more dependent on precision. Some balances will, of course, remain unrecoverable. But others are written off simply because no one is equipped to pursue them properly.

That is the real opportunity hiding inside probate recovery. Not aggressive collections, and not a purely legal exercise, but a more disciplined way of handling an area that has long been treated as too complicated or too sensitive to address. Companies like DCM Services are helping define an approach that is data-backed, court-aware, compliant, and measured in tone. For banks and lenders that have historically let these accounts fall away, that may be the clearest sign that the process after death deserves far more attention than it has received.

Demographic trends are also increasing the importance of estate servicing infrastructure. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, adults aged 65 and older are projected to outnumber children in the United States by 2034 for the first time in the country’s history, a shift expected to influence retirement planning, estate administration, and intergenerational wealth management across financial institutions.

Original Article: The Overlooked Banking Challenge Hidden Inside Probate Recovery