Today marks a significant step in the journey of InDebted. We have completed our first acquisition and in turn accelerated our entry into the US market. Through our acquisition of Delta Outsource Group we gain access to national licensing infrastructure, an incredible group of people, and a footprint that ensures that the US will be our fastest growing market yet.
We also welcome Tim Collins onboard as our Chief Customer Officer. As the global leader in customer-centric collections, we are reaffirming our commitment to supporting our customers in their financial fitness journey through the establishment of this role. For the last 20 years Tim has been a champion for US consumers in debt, a leader in digital collections, and a seasoned professional in the fields of compliance and ethics.
Why the US and why now?
There are several factors that drove us to enter the American market at this point in time:
- Many of our global clients are growing exceptionally fast in the US market. Extending their integration with us to support the US allows them to offer the same digital first and customer-centric collections experience to their customers as we do in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
- We think there are a lot of valuable lessons from our learnings in the Australian market. Australia is a leader in collections regulation. The industry has been using digital communications for consumers in debt for over a decade. Our regulators protect consumers and respect their preferences for engagement. InDebted has differentiated itself as a leader in collections, not just by being the only provider who sends email.
- Our product is unmatched. The scalability and maintainability of our platform allows us to enter new markets quickly. We are benefiting from the lessons of having done this before in multiple countries and tackled the various localisation challenges that arise.
- Throughout 2020 we embraced a remote-first culture at InDebted. This has allowed us to tap into a global talent pool of exceptional people who believe in our mission and want to help us deliver a global collections API for our clients.
- Although the decision had already been made to purchase Delta and enter the US market, the CFPB released their final rule with regards to the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act in October, 2020. We always knew that this rule update was a possibility and could potentially align with InDebted’s vision of digital collections and the release (which places limits on the number of outbound phone calls and legitimses the use of digital contact strategies) only cemented our view that the timing was right to introduce the InDebted platform into the American market.
Our plans for Delta
The integration of Delta has been underway for over a month. During the coming months Delta will be transitioned into our US operations and will be rebranded as InDebted. The team at Delta will join as team members at InDebted and we will continue to support Delta’s existing clients and work to migrate them onto the InDebted platform this year.
To ensure the continued success of Delta throughout the transition and into the future as InDebted, John Watson has been appointed as the CEO of Delta. John joins InDebted having previously led the national collection agency ARS National Services as its president and CEO. John brings a wealth of experience into the role and will be a tremendous asset to our company.
Jim Peacock, Delta’s founder and CEO will retire. On behalf of all of the team at Delta I’d like to thank Jim for his phenomenal work in building the business into what it is today. Jim, enjoy your well earned retirement and congratulations. I’d also like to thank and congratulate Delta’s other owners Jackie Warner-Mucha and Michael Lages for their support and leadership. Michael will be supporting us during the transition and Jackie will be remaining with InDebted into the future.
We will soon be entering into a private beta with some of our existing global clients and will be ready to welcome new US clients on board from next quarter. We have some major brands ready to start immediately and are very excited to be welcoming many new clients on board in the future. If you’d like to learn more about our product please reach out for a demo today.
What's next?
Whilst we are laser focused on our US launch we plan to announce further new markets throughout 2021. Many of our clients have flagged their own intentions to expand into new regions this year and we intend to be ready to support their growth plans as best we can.
InDebted has come a long way from its early days collecting overdue SME invoices in Australia. A relentless focus on product and an unwavering commitment to supporting consumers has enabled us to get to this point. Despite how far we have come, we have barely scratched the surface of our goals. Over the coming years we will deliver the world’s first global collections API, enabling the businesses of the present and future to decouple collections from their stack and focus on what differentiates them and allow them to scale faster than ever before.
We now employ more people outside of Australia than within Australia for the first time. Not only have we welcomed the people from Delta as new colleagues, our remote-first culture has enabled us to hire people from all around the world and we are benefiting from their diverse skill sets and viewpoints. This will be a year of tremendous growth for our business, if you would like to be part of the journey please check out our open roles here: https://www.indebted.co/careers
Onward and upward 🚀
You can read more about our acquisition of Delta and US expansion here:
