The First True Financial Benchmarking Report for Debt Collection Agencies

The accounts receivable management industry is dominated by small, privately held companies and can be difficult to benchmark because there is little public financial data available and few companies are willing to part with sensitive financial data.

Through a partnership with Business Valuation Resources LLC, insideARM.com has arranged to bring you extensive collection agency financial information from BizMiner that has not previously been available about the industry.

How extensive? In previous benchmarking reports published by Kaulkin Media and others, the number of collection agencies contributing information was typically no more than 200. While this is a nice overall sample size, it was not a number that lent itself to segmentation or “drilling down.”

insideARM.com’s Collection Agency Financial Benchmark Report 2011 contains complete financial data from 1,658 companies.

That’s right: more than 1,600 collection agencies. BizMiner accessed and aggregated financial statements from various sources, including the IRS, U.S. Census data, credit reporting agencies, and much more.

Simply put, this is the most comprehensive benchmarking report ever produced for the ARM industry.

What’s in the report? Detailed financial performance data from collection agencies, including income and expense (total revenue, cost of sales, gross margin, rent costs, taxes, EBITDA, net income, and more, expressed in dollars and percentage of revenue), balance sheet information, financial ratios (like return on assets and business revenue), and still more.

And all of this data is broken out by revenue size for the following ranges:

• Revenues Under $500k
• Revenues $500k – $999k
• Revenues $1 million – $2.49 million
• Revenues $2.5 million – $4.99 million
• Revenues $5 million – $9.99 million
• Revenues $10 million – $24.99 million
• Revenues $25 million – $49.99 million
• Revenues $50 million – $99.99 million

So this report is relevant to collection agencies of any size. The data is also delivered for every calendar year from 2005 to the second quarter of 2010.

If you are seriously interested in benchmarking your collection agency’s financial performance against the broadest sample possible, please consider this report. You can find more information, including a table of contents and complete list of data provided at http://www.insidearm.com/store/books-and-reports/collection-agency-financial-benchmark-report-2011/.

If you’d like to learn more about P&L benchmarking, the LinkedIn group Professional Women of the Collections Industry is holding a free conference call tomorrow, Tuesday May 24 at 2pm Eastern, called Knowing Your P&L. Anyone can participate. Hear the CEO of Estate Information Services, JC Gunnell, speak on why it’s important to know the finances behind your business.  Dial 712-432-3900 code 474455 to participate in the call.