Late payments or no payments to creditors may be a fact of life for some people affected by the recession. For businesses, that reality thrusts the collections process to the top of their priority lists. Taking a customer-centric approach to collections may actually increase how much companies can recover from delinquent customers.
 
Unemployment, bankruptcy, health insurance premiums, the rising price of necessities (food and fuel), and falling home values are the top five factors leading to current payment delinquencies, according to accounts receivable management consultancy Kaulkin Ginsberg. And Equifax's recent Credit Trends Monitor Report states that 7 percent of homeowners were more than 30 days late on their mortgage payment in January, up 50 percent from last year. Meanwhile, consumer bankruptcies continued to rise, with January 2009 figures 25 percent higher than January 2008. This illustrates what we all know: More people are falling into debt that requires collections action.
 
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