The Richest Man You've Never Heard Of

Sure.

And in that instant, both the Bartmann family and the multitrillion-dollar collection industry were changed forever.

Alchemy.
"Two-thousand-dollar settlement! It's raining money!" Amid applause, the employee excitedly runs to the board and draws another gold bar on top of the existing pile.

Here, on CFS's floor of operations, there's little hint of the unsavory, low-tech, vaguely scary world that is the collection business. If anything, the atmosphere feels like a PBS telethon. There are the silly games to track progress, the raucous self-congratulation as goals are met. But the most striking thing, here inside the beating heart of the most effective collection machine in history, is that the collectors are, well, nice.

"You currently owe $5,500 on your MasterCard account," Marty Moore is saying in a voice worthy of a flight attendant. "Are you able to pay that today?" She's careful to follow Bartmann's cardinal rule: that debtors are "customers" and must be referred to as such. "They're not deadbeats, not derelicts, not pond scum," Bartmann says. "I know it sounds Pollyanna-ish, but I believe that 90% are good people who ran into a bad problem. Just like me: I found myself in a hole one morning, and I wanted to dig myself out, but I didn't know how. Having been broke, I understand the customer."

So Marty Moore--leading her team this month with just over $100,000 in collections--assumes the tone of a firm but empathetic counselor, offering the promise of a second chance. "Are you working right now?" she asks her customer. "How much money are you bringing home after taxes? If I were to go over your budget with you, could I ask for a $25 payment?" Because CFS does not sue customers or confront them in person (the balances are too small to make it economically logical), the leverage it applies is purely psychological. Wayne Learned, managing director of operations, puts it best. "I don't want you to feel afraid of me," he says, leaning forward in his chair as his voice descends to a gravelly whisper. "But I want you to feel guilty."

Even when Moore gets an earful of abuse, she's to treat it as part of the customer's healing process. You lose your temper, she's been told, you lose your job. "I want to get in your heart and your mind," says Bartmann. "If I can get you to like me and trust me, I'm probably going to get more out of you than the guy who's yelling and screaming." Some debtors--sorry, customers--have even sent Moore thank-you notes for the unexpectedly cordial treatment.

Then, too, Marty Moore and her fellow employees are armed to the teeth with technology, starting with the nation's largest installation of predictive dialers. These contraptions systematically telephone customers and, upon finding one who answers, summon that customer's vital information to a collector's computer monitor. Quickly, Moore can scope out whom she's dealing with: if the customer is represented by a lawyer, a "shark" warning appears. If the customer lives in a state that requires the reading of the so-called "mini-Miranda" upon every call, her screen flashes red.

Of particular interest is the window in the bottom right corner of the screen. It reads like a catalog of the woes of the American debtor: "Cust called. Said he's disputing this debt. He bought an edge cutter and returned it same day, it broke." "Cust said fell behind when bro died of AIDS." "He stated that the IRS is threatening to seize property and bank accounts." "Mrs. said that cust had been employed for 4 years and then got hurt, said they have nothing." And every so often, the breakthrough: "Cust proposes settlement for $425 in two payments."

When a tentative bargain of that sort is struck, Moore moves to her "justification" window and writes why she believes the deal is a good one for CFS. It's then reviewed by an approval manager elsewhere in the building, who sends an electronic thumbs-up or thumbs-down within two hours.

All of this is part of an effort to bring to the collection business what it has traditionally lacked: a measure of scientific certainty and predictability. That's also the purpose of the credit-grading model CFS has developed. The document looks like a pyramid of boxes. Each bad debt is figuratively dropped into the uppermost box. Then, depending on each debt's particular "chemical composition"--the size of the balance, the amount of information available about how to contact the debtor--it sifts through eight levels until it winds up in one of 161 boxes at the base of the pyramid. Each of those boxes has a number affixed to it. A 28 means that CFS thinks it can collect 28% of the debt's face value.

Robbin Conner, an analyst at Moody's Investors Service, says the accuracy of Bartmann's collection projections to date has been "fairly astonishing." Of course, the company's extraordinary rate of growth now threatens to undermine that operational predictability. Then again, Bartmann had already thought of that.

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