It’s Not Just Regulators Who Expect You To Audit for Compliance

Your clients are expecting you to conduct various audits of your processes and procedures.
An internal audit program is the firewall between your agency’s operations and potential non-compliant actions. But what exactly is an internal audit? And what are some best practices to consider when implementing and deploying an internal audit procedure for your company?

In this whitepaper from Interactive Intelligence, you’ll learn four steps to keep your agency safely on track — from both a collection agency and debt buyer perspective.

  • Step 1: Establish an internal audit foundation
  • Step 2: Plan and scope
  • Step 3: Conduct an audit
  • Step 4: Audit reporting and follow-up

from the whitepaper:

Step 4: Audit reporting and follow-up

For long-term tracking and analysis of data, a more formal outline will be your better choice. These documents can be housed in most data logging and tracking systems. Once you set the scope of your audit, you will want to create a document that is automatically populated with information for each element you want to review.

Collection Agency

  1. Work closely with your IT teams to research and implement a data logging system. These systems are set up specifically to maintain this type of data. There are a number of free (or add on) systems you can use, or you might choose to purchase a more comprehensive system that will allow you to track audits, collector disciplinary action, and monetary compensation along with profitability per head. This is very much an individual agency choice.
  2. Publish your preliminary results to all involved parties for feedback and understanding and remediation plans.
  3. Review preliminary feedback and produce your initial audit report. Provide your initial audit report to local counsel, compliance or agency owner for review.
  4. Publish your final audit report with remediation timelines and log results into your systems.
  5. Schedule review and follow up of any remediation items.

Debt Buyer

  1. Policy implementation and training are integral for success. While the audit team can’t be composed of your entire organization, key findings from the audit team should be shared with the wider organization.
  2. Make sure your audit team meets regularly to discuss progress, issues, successes, and critical points that need attention.