FMA Alliance, Ltd. (FMA) is a privately-owned receivables management company originally formed in 1983 and headquartered in Houston, Texas. FMA's multifaceted, meticulously organized first-party and third-party efforts facilitate debt recovery for clients in sectors including Financial Services, Healthcare, Student Loan, and Government. Over 600 employees staff FMA’s state-of-the-art call center.
“Our old system would not have been able to meet our expanded needs.”
Early on, FMA founders Jeff Spiegelhauer and Doyle Burkett recognized the impact that technology would have on debt collection. Company leadership worked with developers to create an innovative web portal where customers could negotiate payment of their debt without having to speak to an agent. When it was launched in 2014, that proprietary software was cutting edge but, in the decade that followed, it became obsolete. “Once, we were leading the way,” says FMA President Mike Janakes. “What we built back then was pretty reliable. It did what we wanted it to do at first, but then the technology passed us while we stood still.”
He continues, “Everything’s changed since Covid. The pandemic altered the makeup of our industry. Two of our clients became huge. The number, quantity, and volume of debts went up by a factor of five.”
The need for secure data management was more pressing than ever.
FMA’s 99.99% customer satisfaction score is a source of pride. Janakes knows keeping that near-perfect rating depends not only on successful debt collection, but also on impeccable data security and unfaltering compliance with constantly expanding regulatory requirements. He says, “Our software did not meet SOC-2 Type 2 standards or incorporate features like multi-factor authentication, and we did not have the in-house expertise we would need to update it.”
Outdated technology was creating compliance concerns that jeopardized FMA’s client relationships.
Janakes has seen competitors suffer the consequences of missteps. “The harm to reputation is huge,” he says. “Marquee clients want nothing to do with an agency that’s had a data breach. After they lose data in a breach or are locked down by ransomware, their biggest clients drop them.”
FMA needed a new platform that would align with contemporary security requirements. Leadership reached out to industry colleagues who recommended Tratta.
“Right away, I knew Tratta was the right choice.”
The FMA team investigated several candidates, but Janakes, who describes himself as “sales-averse,” says he just didn’t click with any of them. “Every single one we talked to was just trying to hard sell. It was like, ‘Hey, let's get this signed today,’ you know?” He goes on, “Then I got to Josh Allen and the folks at Tratta. All they wanted to know was how they could help.”
Tratta was primed to help FMA meet and exceed their new security needs.
When asked about recent industry changes, Janakes has a quick response. “Regulatory oversight has just gone through the roof,” he says. Built by experienced industry experts who understand what compliance requires, Tratta incorporates numerous features designed to reduce risk by segmenting, restricting, and protecting data.
“When transactions quintupled, we were able to meet the moment with Tratta.”
Quick data migration made for an implementation of FMA’s self-service web portal so smooth that Janakes doesn't remember the details. “With most vendors, there’s usually a hiccup or two,” he says, “They stick out. But the transition to Tratta was so flawless that I can't recall the process. That’s a good thing!”
Full onboarding took about 30 days. Janakes witnessed Tratta’s agility in action and was pleased with what he saw. When auditors or clients raised a security concern, Tratta was quickly responsive. “They would say, ‘This piece seems risky to us,’ or, ‘We want to change the way customers authenticate their accounts,’ and Tratta was immediately helpful and agile. In that first year, they made many tweaks to better meet our needs – and they still do.”
FMA has experienced 5X growth since 2020. “We went through rapid and unanticipated expansion,” says Janakes, “and Tratta never went down. It was ultra-dependable.”
As the company's client roster expanded, new needs arose. Janakes tells the story of one organization that wanted not only to bring accounts current, but to offer the option to settle. “Imagine their client is two or three payments behind and owes $600 on a $10,000 debt. They wanted us to collect that $600 and offer a settlement, maybe $6,000, to wipe the slate clean.” Janakes turned to the Tratta team for help. “Tratta had to configure the payment portal, and it was a very complicated scenario,” he says. “We had all this data coming from the client. They had to make sure everything was mapped properly and the offers were correct based on the amount of the debt and the age of the account.” He continues, “A lot of agencies would have struggled, but Tratta got it done. We were way ahead of everyone else.”
FMA has seen a significant reduction in the number of calls required to recover debts. “There was this one guy who we’d tried to reach by phone dozens of times,” says Janakes, “and we could never get him. But we sent him an automated email and he clicked the link and BANG! He made a $12,000 payment via the portal.”
Janakes was alerted to that large payment via his favorite Tratta feature – detailed reports, automatically delivered on schedule. “We get an enormous amount of information,” he says. “We can drill down to virtually anything. I can see how many payments we're receiving broken down by hour and what states these payments are coming from.”
The FMA team uses that data to drive decisions. Janakes says, “Tratta gives us unique URLs for everything, so I know the pathway that a customer took to get to the payment portal. All of our clients perform differently. When we know that if we send texts to Client X accounts in the state of California on a Friday night, we get more and higher payments over the weekend than we would if we did it on a Tuesday, we can use that information to pinpoint our strategies.”
Best of all, Tratta’s security layers and cloud-based system keep data safe for all stakeholders – FMA, their clients, and the customers they serve. Janakes's confidence in Tratta helps him focus on revenue. “My clients count on me to keep them compliant,” says Janakes. “I have to be able to rely on vendors to be 100% solid. I'm so grateful, because now I sleep better at night knowing my information is secure at Tratta.”
