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We are pleased to welcome Jonathan Murphy as our new sales director to help with the growth and expansion of BankruptcyWatch.

We are pleased to welcome our new sales director to help with the growth and expansion of BankruptcyWatch. Jon brings a helpful background to the bankruptcy scene with experience as an account executive in the mortgage industry, and experience serving in the Coast Guard as a training & education system financial manager. Jon earned a degree in business administration management with his degree being presented by United States President Bill Clinton.

Jon also has experience as a Service Manager for Cintas where he was responsible for over 1000 customer accounts and $90,000+ in weekly revenue ($4.6 M annually). He was also fleet Manager for a 45-truck fleet, which included oversight of safety, preventative maintenance, and budget.

While working hard, Jon also appreciates taking time for the good things in life. He opened and operates the first Irish Pub in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where friends and family can gather to enjoy traditional Irish food, fun, and culture.

Jon knows how to give back to his community. He is an active member of the American Legion and an active member of the Navy League of the United States.

Jon is ready for a new opportunity and Bankruptcy Watch is a natural fit.

BankruptcyWatch is becoming an integral part of the lending industry by making it possible for lenders, large and small, with their industry-first tools that help lenders more efficiently detect and automatically process all of their responses to any part of a bankruptcy case. This cutting-edge automation also helps lenders easily obtain a more comprehensive picture of the financial status of their client or potential client thereby promoting efficient and effective decision-making through the lending process. While tracking bankruptcy filings is not new, converting those filings from a cost to a profit center for your company is easier than ever before.

Such unique and powerful software calls for great representation.

Jon can help current and potential clients meet and exceed expectations for their bankruptcy department.

To learn more about how BankruptcyWatch can help your organization, email jon.murphy@BankruptcyWatch.com, visit www.BankruptcyWatch.com or call (888) 895-1328.

Jonathan Murphy joins the team!

BankruptcyWatch, a leading bankruptcy data, and monitoring service, recently signed a joint partnership agreement with Infinity, an all-inclusive loan solutions platform.  

The partnership is aimed at further boosting Infinity’s state-of-the-art lending software system which helps lenders (primarily payday and short-term lenders) obtain fast, comprehensive, and accurate information about loan applications.

As a result of this joint effort, Infinity users no longer need to waste time dealing with the bankruptcy court when processing applications. BankruptcyWatch now provides Infinity with seamless, embedded and real-time bankruptcy information directly from the court database.

“This new data capability benefits Infinity users because they now get live access to bankruptcy information and perform instant bankruptcy checks resulting in faster, more reliable, and accurate decisions when processing loan applications or collecting on a potentially bankrupt debt,” said Lance Wickham, President of BankruptcyWatch.

Jennifer Klein, Support Manager at Infinity, added that the integration with BankruptcyWatch “adds an important new layer of service to the solutions we provide our clients.”

Infinity offers a host of services focusing on short-term, long-term, title, and other types of lending. Their clients include lenders of all sizes who want an all-inclusive fast, and hassle-free underwriting and loan management experience.

Wickham noted that the partnership is a perfect alignment of values since both “BankruptcyWatch and Infinity are committed to providing clients the solutions they need to remain compliant, give superior customer service and enhance their bottom line.”

BankruptcyWatch offers a comprehensive, live and accurate bankruptcy data and monitoring service to clients. Infinity’s software solution, meanwhile, covers services such as loan reporting and analysis, marketing, loan payment processing, collection, email, and text messaging among others.

The main benefits of this new partnership at a glance include:

Instant bankruptcy check saving clients time and money

Bankruptcy checks both before lending and while servicing loans

Receive and process information around the clock (brick and mortar and online)

Faster loan processing and increased loan term competitiveness

For more information about Infinity’s lending software services, email sales@infinityels.com, visit Infinityels.com, or call them at 1-866-792-3682.

BankruptcyWatch & Infinity Partner Up For Improved Collectability

BankruptcyWatch and Infinity have implemented a consumer bankruptcy monitoring tool as part of their ongoing and expanding collaborative partnership.

BankruptcyWatch and Infinity have implemented a consumer bankruptcy monitoring tool as part of their ongoing and expanding collaborative partnership. This feature is now accessible to all Infinity clients and gives them automated access to filing data that further increases the benefits already offered to them through Infinity’s excellent software platform.

This means that Infinity’s current users, large and small, can now automatically receive and process bankruptcy information the moment a debtor or applicant files bankruptcy. Infinity clients have complete control over the bankruptcy monitoring process and the added freedom created by automation.

Since BankruptcyWatch supplies Consumer Monitoring data directly through Infinity’s platform, Infinity users save time by having two great services easily integrated in one place. This service is an expansion of the live-check feature that was implemented over a year ago. This enables Lenders to easily and effortlessly monitor the debtor’s status.

“This service is yet another layer of value that we provide to help lenders increase collections while simultaneously reducing risk and potentially convert a loss into something profitable,” said Lance Wickham, President of BankruptcyWatch.

Jennifer Klein with Infinity, emphasized that “in this age of big data and analytics, it is important that we provide the latest tools and the most comprehensive information available in real-time. We do this always with an eye towards offering better strategic opportunities and higher value propositions to our clients’ business.”

Wickham added that “integrating Consumer bankruptcy Monitoring directly into the Infinity platform gives their clients easy access to the most comprehensive bankruptcy monitoring and research tools on the market today.”

Some of the major benefits Infinity users will get out of Consumer Monitoring include:

An easy setup that takes less than 5 minutes to complete. 

Instant notifications when a debtor files a new bankruptcy case.

Avoid legal exposure by knowing precisely when to stop collection activities. This keeps lenders from accidentally violating the automatic stay.

Easily obtain a more comprehensive picture of the financial status of the client and potential client thereby promoting efficient and effective decision-making.

BankruptcyWatch and Infinity have provided hundreds of thousands of live and accurate bankruptcy reports to their users. Infinity provides the industry’s leading technology platform with the most comprehensive set of loan products, mobile technology, advanced reporting, analytics, marketing automation, flexible underwriting, streamlined collections, etc.

To learn more about how BankruptcyWatch can help your organization, visit BankruptcyWatch.com/Infinity, email jon.murphy@BankruptcyWatch.com, or call 1-888-895-1328.

For more information about Infinity’s lending software services, email sales@infinityels.com, visit Infinityels.com, or call them at 1-866-729-3682.

BankruptcyWatch and Infinity Unveiled

BankruptcyWatch & ZipReports are pleased to announce that they have come together to incorporate live bankruptcy data into tenant and employment screening reports.

BankruptcyWatch & ZipReports are pleased to announce that they have come together to incorporate live bankruptcy data into tenant and employment screening reports.

This addition to ZipReports is aimed at improving access to bankruptcy court information for landlords and employers alike. One of the primary goals is to provide faster, more reliable and accurate reporting to those who need bankruptcy data to make decisions and for ongoing monitoring.

BankruptcyWatch is a leading bankruptcy data provider and ZipReports is a popular tenant and employee screening service based in California.

“We are pleased to offer our premiere integrated and comprehensive bankruptcy data service to ZipReports. This partnership will streamline the process and allow ZipReports clients to be confident that their bankruptcy information is current and accurate,” said Lance Wickham, President of BankruptcyWatch.

Payam Rezan, President of ZipReports, noted that the joint effort with BankruptcyWatch “adds value to the array of services we provide to clients because of the automated and accurate bankruptcy data reporting.”

Rezan believes the initiative will save employers and landlords time and effort. It also allows them further clarity into the financial track record of candidates and prospects.

Rezan noted that with the increased costs and procedures required, it is becoming harder to obtain a credit report. With BankruptcyWatch as a partner, ZipReports clients can now collect bankruptcy information in real time without being required to order a credit report.

Fast and accurate bankruptcy reporting is important not only to landlords but also to employers and their Human Resource (HR) department. This is especially true in situations where bankruptcy information can provide important clues in determining whether an employee can perform well on the job.

The highlights of this partnership include:

Increased efficiency - ZipReports now incorporates accurate and timely bankruptcy information into their reporting, saving their clients the hassle of manually checking the bankruptcy court system or dealing with additional authorization forms.

Reduced risk - BankruptcyWatch data allows landlords and employers to better understand the financial picture of their candidates. This translates to saving money, time and effort down the road.

Enhanced decision-making - Through the timely and accurate data provided by BankruptcyWatch, ZipReports users will enhance their ability to make decisions. Whether processing applications, renewing a lease or keeping track of an employee’s bankruptcy status users now have a direct and easy way to check bankruptcy info.

To learn more about how BankruptcyWatch can help your organization, email Sales@BankruptcyWatch.com, visit BankruptcyWatch.com or call them at (888) 895-1328.
 

For more information on ZipReports and how they can simplify and streamline your screening process, email Service@ZipReports.com, visit ZipReports.net or call them at (800) 311-1585.

ZipReports and BankruptcyWatch Team Up To Enhance Tenant & HR Screening Services

Rising delinquencies are causing lenders to enhance their due diligence process on the front end and look for ways to reduce collections and recovery costs to protect their bottom lines.

The state of the American economy is healthy, according to economic and financial experts. The fundamentals remain strong: low unemployment rate (4.1%), robust growth rate not seen since the Great Recession, and record-breaking stock market performance.

However, if one were to look closely at some specific economic indicators such as household debt, some worrying trends begin to emerge. The rise in car loan delinquencies, for example, especially amongst subprime borrowers (620 credit score or below), is beginning to show signs of the proverbial canary in a coal mine.

Auto finance companies and banks are experiencing a rise in subprime and even above prime delinquencies. Non-bank finance companies are especially affected because they hold roughly 75% of the $282 billion in subprime auto loans. Banks and other lenders hold the rest.

The trend in delinquent car loan payments has been steadily climbing for the past two years and is now closing in on the 2008 financial crash levels. A significant chunk of these delinquencies are seriously delinquent (90+ days late in payments).

These rising delinquencies are causing lenders to enhance their due diligence process on the front end and look for ways to reduce collections and recovery costs to protect their bottom lines. Alternative credit data is gaining popularity and in many cases being deemed as or more influential than traditional credit reports. BankruptcyWatch is ideally situated to help lenders in every facet of their lending process.

BankruptcyWatch provides a comprehensive bankruptcy solution to help lenders score recent filers and give them exactly what they need to make fast and accurate credit and collections decisions. Utilizing our full toolset, organizations are completely automating their bankruptcy departments and decisioning elements.

BankruptcyWatch’s patent pending technology gives lenders instant access to bankruptcy data and unlocks the information inside the filed documents. This data includes the ability to calculate a debtor’s debt-to-income ratio as well as knowing what they intend to do with all of their assets and so much more. BankruptcyWatch obtains real-time data from the court system that is far more reliable and accurate than any other available method and is customized based on each lender’s specific requirements.

To learn more about how BankruptcyWatch can help your company or organization, email Sales@BankruptcyWatch.com or call us at (888) 895-1328.

Auto Loan Delinquencies Are On The Rise

BankruptcyWatch's PDF Document Parsing Engine now includes the Chapter 13 Plan. Ensure maximum revenue from each and every Plan, react to Plan changes and updates, reduce costs related to the hiring of expensive staff to parse, review and interpret the complex Plan filings.

La Quinta, California - With the looming move to standardize the Chapter 13 Official Plan Form, BankruptcyWatch stands ready to help their clients take advantage of this key change in the filed bankruptcy documents.

BankruptcyWatch announced today at the Annual MasterQueue User Conference that their PDF Document Parsing Engine now includes the Chapter 13 Plan.

The Federal Bankruptcy Court recently mandated that all new Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings must use a uniform Official Form 113. It must be noted that district courts will still have the option to use a different form, however, the contents of the plan must comply with established guidelines.

The change takes effect starting December 1st. BankruptcyWatch has already put in place the technological capability and expertise to read and process the submitted Plans with a high degree of accuracy and efficiency.

Lance Wickham, President of BankruptcyWatch, said “Every organization that is affected by Chapter 13 bankruptcy needs and reads the Plan. We are proud to be the first to offer this new capability and we expect this huge leap in our technology to revolutionize the way companies use the Plan.”

BankruptcyWatch has been electronically reading bankruptcy documents for their clients for a number of years. This new feature allows their clients to experience the best possible outcome in every bankruptcy case with little to no staff time required.

Some key benefits of using BankruptcyWatch’s latest technology to process the latest Chapter 13 Plans include:

Ability to ensure maximum revenue from each and every Plan

Faster reactions to Plan changes and updates

Significant reduction in costs related to the hiring of expensive staff to parse, review and interpret the complex Plan filings

High level of accuracy and enhanced efficiency to the company workflow due to the  automation process

“Even if you already have some level of bankruptcy workflow automation, we can still add tremendous value to your organization.” Wickham noted.  “Lenders need to know with clarity the details of the Plan to understand the implications it will have on their processes and revenue,” he added.

BankruptcyWatch Unveils Powerful Chapter 13 Payment Plan Data

Lenders and Servicers now have the ability to automate virtually all of their bankruptcy workflow steps as a result of their newly enhanced filing notifications and PACER API.

BankruptcyWatch, a SaaS solution for automating bankruptcy work, announced this week that Lenders and Servicers now have the ability to automate virtually all of their bankruptcy workflow steps as a result of their newly enhanced filing notifications and PACER API.  “We saw that our clients and others in bankruptcy collections needed to immediately and electronically understand the full picture of each newly filed bankruptcy,” said Lance Wickham, CEO at BankruptcyWatch. “Organizations usually need more information than is typically available from notifications in order to appropriately react. We make that information available in a format that allows BankruptcyWatch clients to skip all of the manual legwork - including downloading and reading documents - and go straight to making decisions. This saves an enormous amount of time and resources required to manually research each case.”

Many BankruptcyWatch clients have already moved completely away from using PACER. These enhanced notifications allow companies to further reduce, and in many cases completely eliminate, the mind-share that is required to deal with new bankruptcies. “In 2017, we expect our clients to move completely beyond the concept of individual bankruptcy notifications. Imagine arriving at work and seeing a single notification that your company’s bankruptcy work has already been completed for the day. That’s now possible with BankruptcyWatch.” said Wickham.

Increased Staff Efficiency. Cut payroll costs and shift the focus to making sound decisions instead of mindlessly entering data or wasting time searching for documents in each case.

Reduced Risk. Because the data is electronically gathered directly from the court system using the BankruptcyWatch PACER API, there is less risk of staff missing an important detail or making a mistake in the data entry process.

Customizable Data. With literally thousands of available data points, BankruptcyWatch makes the relevant information easily accessible in every case.

Multiple Notification Methods. BankruptcyWatch clients can now receive notifications and data via API call and text message (SMS) in addition to the industry standard email method. This allows for automated file updating and workflow advancement as well as more instant reactions by agents in the field.

To learn more about BankruptcyWatch’s industry-leading bankruptcy scrub and monitoring system, visit www.BankruptcyWatch.com, email 
Sales@BankruptcyWatch.com or call 888-895-1328.

BankruptcyWatch Releases Enhanced Bankruptcy Scrubs & Monitoring

BankruptcyWatch announces their PACER.gov monitoring tool called PacerUpTime.com. PacerUpTime.com allows any organization or individual to track the current and prior status of federal bankruptcy court website availability.

BankruptcyWatch announces their PACER.gov monitoring tool called PacerUpTime.com. PacerUpTime.com allows any organization or individual to track the current and prior status of federal bankruptcy court website availability. PACER.gov is the US government’s electronic court records repository and consists of data from 94 different court districts. Because PACER.gov pulls from so many sources, it is surprisingly common for one or more data sources to be unavailable at any given time. “Not knowing if a particular district is at fault or some other problem prohibits access to certain bankruptcy courts can be a real challenge for organizations such as banks, loan servicing companies and underwriters.”, says Jonathan Turkanis, VP - Software Architecture. This is especially true if those organizations utilize automated means of access to PACER information such as the BankruptcyWatch PACER API. PacerUpTime.com tracks the availability of all 94 of the federal bankruptcy court websites.

Many organizations across the country have thousands of employees trained to use and interact with the PACER court systems. When court websites go down, it wreaks havoc on their operations. Lance Wickham, President of BankruptcyWatch said, “This new tool is enormously convenient for our users, and anyone else to easily figure out if a specific court is down at any given time.” He says “Since BankruptcyWatch is essentially automating entire bankruptcy departments, it’s important for our clients to quickly determine the courts' status so they can take proper steps to minimize any issues that may cause.” Adding that “Until now, the go-to source for information was a phone call to PACER which often means waiting on hold for long periods of time and getting only limited information from the support agents.”

PacerUpTime.com provides some unique elements including a quick and easy overview of every district as well as a more in-depth view that helps users understand the severity and type of issue the system is experiencing.

BankruptcyWatch is the industry leader in providing automated access to bankruptcy court data, including information contained inside PDF documents. For more information on how to automate your bankruptcy department or how PacerUpTime.com works, email Sales@BankruptcyWatch.com, visit www.BankruptcyWatch.com or call 888-895-1328.

Announcing PacerUpTime.com

Beginning December 1st, new bankruptcy filers must use the new forms that were recently released by the U.S. Courts. These forms are quite different than their decade-old predecessors and initially pose an increase in risk to lenders as their staff work to understand the new format and determine where the important bits of data are now kept.

If bankruptcy managers haven’t already, they are about to hear from their staff how the new bankruptcy forms are affecting their work. Beginning December 1st, new bankruptcy filers must use the new forms that were recently released by the U.S. Courts. These forms are quite different than their decade-old predecessors and initially pose an increase in risk to lenders as their staff work to understand the new format and determine where the important bits of data are now kept. On top of that, training has become more complicated because the old forms submitted through November 30th will still be prevalent during the next couple years, so employees will need to know both the old and new forms.

Lending practices, borrowing trends, and even types of debt have changed quite a bit over the last 10 years and the old forms have been pretty much the same for about a decade.

The older forms were the same for both individual debtors filing a Chapter 7 or 13 and a large corporation. This meant the older forms were more complicated than a typical debtor’s filing required and led to debtor-side mistakes which cost the court and creditors additional time and effort to correct.

About 10% of all non-business cases from October 1, 2014 through September 30th, 2015 were filed without an attorney. According the IRS, in 2014, 44% of electronic tax filings were self-prepared. Although different, the two types of filings can be thought of as similar and the courts would like to allow debtors more freedom to file without an attorney. The new forms are meant to be easier for the layperson to understand and fill out and are available as electronically fillable PDFs.

The new bankruptcy forms are meant to be easier for the debtor to understand and fill out. Naturally, this means that there needs to be more paperwork to fill out. The old Voluntary Petition was typically 3 pages. The new forms are 7 pages long. A typical individual bankruptcy filing that includes all statements and schedules will be around 70 pages where it used to be around 50. Lenders can expect their employees to need more time to sift through the paperwork as they encounter more of the new forms.

If the Court is correct and easier forms actually mean more Pro Se debtors, lenders can expect to adjust their policies regarding Pro Se debtors or risk reducing their pool of acceptable candidates. Certainly, if Pro Se filings may increase, we can also expect to see issues arise outside of the initial filing. Debtors often have tasks they need to perform well after their bankruptcy is discharged. Increased Pro Se filings will almost certainly impact the cost of writing and servicing bankruptcy loans.

Lenders are at a point where they need to decide whether to invest in re-training and maintaining their staff’s knowledge or finding new ways of dealing with the amount of data that is required to make sound bankruptcy lending decisions. It makes sense that many will choose to train employees because until recently, there wasn’t another real alternative. As lenders make their decisions and pour months of training and lots of money into these new forms, may I suggest that there is an electronic alternative which should be brought to the table.

New Bankruptcy Forms Are Here

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