Who needs to approve an agent matching pilot or contract, and who should own it?

Who signs off, and what each one checks

Your creditor clients may have their own reasons to look. The CFPB’s Compliance Bulletin and Policy Guidance 2016-02, published in October 2016, described the CFPB’s expectation that the banks and nonbanks it supervises oversee their service providers so that they comply with federal consumer financial law. Whether that bulletin still applies, and which rules apply to your agency and each client, is for your counsel; BestPair does not provide legal or compliance advice.

An order that avoids rework

In our view this order saves the most time:

1. Operations and finance agree the campaigns and the measure. Which campaigns are in scope, and what result would count for the agency.
2. Compliance and counsel read the documents and check each placement agreement for vendor clauses.
3. IT confirms the exports and the transfer. Which files leave, how often, and that they move by an encrypted transfer rather than by email.
4. Creditor approvals, where an agreement requires them. A campaign can stay out of scope until its creditor decides.
5. The signature.

All of it belongs before the signature. Once a fee is paid or data has moved, a late objection from any of these reviewers costs more to settle.

Who should own it day to day

In our view the owner should be one named person on the operations side: someone who runs the floor, can get the assignments loaded each day, and can raise adherence when it slips. Only operations can make the floor follow the assignments (when collectors skip assignments). Finance should own the reading of the result: both groups, the same measure, every month.

Settle at the start who answers the vendor’s data questions, who reads each month’s results, and who makes the call at each decision point in the contract. Write the names down. In our view the champion who pushed for the pilot is often not the right person for all three.

If the champion leaves

People move on during a contract that runs for a year. In our view what keeps the work steady is what was written down at the start:

• The documents. The contract should set the scope, the control group, the measure, the fee, the term and the exits, so a successor does not have to rebuild any of it.
• The agreed measure. Written down before the start, with your own note of what result would count for the agency. What counts as success.
• The monthly record. Both groups’ results each month, with the calculations behind them available on request.
• The exits. What the agency can end, when, and with how much notice, known to more than one person.

When the owner changes, update the named contacts with the vendor, hand the successor the contract and the last few statements, and walk them through the measure before the next invoice arrives. A good question to ask any vendor before signing: what happens to the work if our sponsor leaves?

With BestPair

BestPair’s Order Form sets the scope, the control group, the measure, the fee, the term and the exits, and one electronic signature accepts it with the Standard Terms and the Data Processing Addendum. What agencies sign, the term and leaving early and what happens if the first report shows no gain cover the detail.

Sources

• CFPB, Compliance Bulletin and Policy Guidance 2016-02, Service Providers The CFPB’s guidance on how supervised banks and nonbanks oversee their service providers, released in October 2016 (the full bulletin is linked from the page).