The Credit Services Association (CSA) is celebrating the tremendous progress of the Collector Accreditation Initiative (CAI), and its highly successful impact across the whole of the debt collection industry, as the first anniversary of the initiative approaches.
Serving as an official benchmark that enables both individual collectors and companies to demonstrate their understanding of – and compliance with – industry standards, the CAI has seen an impressively wide take-up with almost 100 companies and over 5000 individual collectors registered to take the test, and 54 companies having achieved full accreditation, all within its first year.
Sara de Tute, President of the CSA said:
“The swift adoption of the CAI by so many within its first year is highly encouraging and such a positive reception only makes more evident the enormous appetite that exists within the debt collection industry for a tangible and credible means not only of achieving compliance but of categorically proving that higher standards of compliance and knowledge are being attained.”
The CAI is an affordable online test for collectors, conducted at their place of work, to test their knowledge of and compliance with industry standards. The test takes no longer than 40 minutes and has a pass mark of 80%, with candidates receiving their results and certification immediately.
Once 70% of a company’s collectors have become CAI accredited, a member organisation is awarded ‘company accreditation’ – an accolade that more than half of the major member companies have now achieved.
Sara says that CAI – and alongside it the Continuous Improvement Programme (CIP) being driven by colleagues within the Debt Buyers and Sellers Group (DBSG) – are both parts of a genuine drive by the industry to further enhance its professionalism:
“We are proud of what has been achieved to date but do not underestimate the ongoing need to demonstrate excellence in compliance.”
