Daily Digest - July 30, 2026

🎂 Happy Birthday: Andrew Stello of Velocity Portfolio Group, Lawrence "Jamie" Prevo of State Collection Service, Laurie Garcia of RNN Group, Inc., and Fred Booker of TrueML.

💬 Group Text Chats are Back! - Sign Up by Tomorrow!

I am excited to announce that I am bringing back the group text chats. We started these last year and they were a great way for people across the industry to get to know one another better and to engage and share and collaborate with each other. Sign up this week. It’s totally free!

New Digital Communications Report

The industry is optimistic. Placements are expected to climb. Consumers, it turns out, are more ready for digital than the businesses serving them.

New AI Event!

I am thrilled to announce a new live conference I am hosting. It’s an AI conference for the credit and collection industry. It will be held in Denver this September. Check out getbrainstorming.com for more information. And watch the video below to see me showcasing my outdoor skills.

If you are interested in being a speaker at the event, click here.

Getting to Know Rachael Moody of Complete Recovery/Waypoint Resource Group

• Her first boss in collections heard her accent and declared her voice was "money," and it turns out the assessment applied to more than her phone presence. Two promotions in under a year later, Rachael Moody is now directing platform operations and automation at Complete Recovery/Waypoint Resource Group. Learn why first impressions of her are usually wrong, what unconventional date-night meal she swears by, and what may be the first hashtag ever dropped in one of these profiles. Sponsored by TEC Services Group.

• More details here.

• This series is sponsored by TEC Services Group

A MESSAGE FROM TCN

TODAY’S WEBINAR

UPCOMING WEBINARS

Missed Payments, Missed Deadline, Made-Up Cases: Appeals Court Affirms Judgment for Auto Lender

• A defendant fighting to keep his Mercedes after two years of missed payments made a series of unforced errors on appeal, but it was what the Court of Appeals of Minnesota found in his brief that drew the sharpest rebuke: three citations to cases that simply do not exist. See how the court handled a textbook default case that ended with a warning every litigant, and every firm reviewing AI-drafted filings, should read.

• More details here.

Judge Invokes 154-Year-Old Precedent to Deny Default Judgment in FDCPA Case

• One defendant answered the lawsuit. The other, in the judge's words, "might be an aggressive debt collector, but it's a passive litigator." So why did the no-show defendant escape a $10,000 default judgment? The answer involves a Supreme Court ruling issued while the embers of the Great Chicago Fire were still warm, and a judge whose opinion is as entertaining as it is instructive on when default judgments have to wait.

• More details here.

STIR/SHAKEN's Uneven Rollout Leaves Legitimate Callers Fighting for Trust

• Three years into full enforcement, the caller authentication framework was supposed to help legitimate callers stand out. Instead, a new report finds 17% of confirmed spoofed calls are arriving with top-tier "A" attestation, while fully compliant outbound campaigns are still getting flagged by carrier analytics. The numbers explain why your answer rates feel stuck, and why attestation alone is no longer enough.

• More details here.

AI Startup That Clones Top Performers Raises $30M

• While most enterprise AI vendors pitch call deflection and headcount cuts, one startup just raised $30 million on the opposite bet: AI agents trained to replicate the exact behaviors of your best performers, right down to their jokes. Its customers invested in the round after seeing results, and one lender claims a 10x return within months. Here is why the approach should sound familiar to anyone who has managed a collection floor.

• More details here.

Visa Layoffs Signal Where Automation Is Headed in Financial Services

• Visa is cutting 2,600 jobs, and the CEO tied the move directly to AI. But the detail that should catch the attention of operations leaders is who is being cut: not back-office support, but engineers and product managers. What the shift up the value chain means for staffing models across an industry built on contact centers and tight margins.

• More details here.

Judge Overrules Objections, Compels Arbitration in FCRA Case

• A consumer closed his credit card with a zero balance, then watched unauthorized charges snowball into a delinquency that cost him a home purchase. But his FCRA and state law claims will not be heard in court. See how the defendant prevailed on its motion to compel arbitration even though the plaintiff argued he never agreed to arbitrate at all, and what sealed the outcome before objections were even considered.

• More details here

WORTH NOTING: If you are looking to buy a house, here is a list of the 10 best cities where you can do that right now ... How retailers influence how much you spend when you are shopping at their stores ... The money mistake that Kevin O'Leary from "Shark Tank" says gets people in "trouble" ... My wife is definitely not in the majority here about school bans on cell phones ... How to stop being so defensive in arguments ... Six Flags has unveiled a new roller coaster that will break six world records ... Scientists have figured out a way to stop cavities without needing to drill ... Talk about doubling down and hitting.

Top 10 Thursday, part I

Top 10 Thursday, Part II

Webinar Recap: QA for an AI Workforce: Monitoring Bots, Setting Pass Standards, and Auditing External AI Agents

In the recent webinar, sponsored by CSS Impact, experts discussed how AI is moving from pilot projects into frontline debt collection, raising urgent questions about compliance, monitoring, and performance standards.

Panelists emphasized that QA for bots must focus on both inputs (data handling, security, compliance) and outputs (accuracy, hallucinations, and consumer safety). Heath Morgan warned that chatbot errors could trigger regulatory backlash: “If a chatbot tells a consumer to eliminate themselves, we will have a wrath of legislation.” Kyle Huff highlighted the importance of “golden examples” to calibrate models and ensure consistent outputs, while Rob Grafrath stressed that bots must meet far stricter QA thresholds than humans: “A bot needs to be nearly perfect because when a bot screws up, that’s a much bigger problem.”

The panel also explored vendor transparency, adversarial testing, and the evolving role of bots in collections—from triage and customer service to direct negotiations. Concerns were raised about consumer-deployed bots, which may impersonate humans, requiring new verification protocols such as multi-factor authentication.

🧠 Key Takeaways:

• Raise QA Standards for Bots: Unlike human agents, bots must achieve near-perfect accuracy to avoid reputational and legal risks.

• Audit and Test Regularly: Conduct adversarial and regression testing on vendor bots instead of relying solely on marketing claims.

• Define Bot Use Cases Clearly: Decide whether bots will handle triage, customer service, or direct collections, and tailor QA frameworks accordingly.

This webinar underscored that AI in collections is no longer experimental—it is operational. Agencies must proactively set guardrails, enforce higher QA standards, and prepare for new compliance challenges as bots become integral to consumer interactions.

Did you know you can get full access to all of my past webinars, along with transcripts and summaries of each, for only $29/month? Sign up to be a premium subscriber today!

The Daily Digest is sponsored by TCN