Due Diligence
What gets examined when a collection agency changes hands, and how to be ready for it from either side of the table.
How diligence usually runs
Scope and request list
The buyer's list is rarely a surprise. It tracks the Full Service categories: company overview, financials, operations, assets, legal and compliance.
Document exchange
Material moves under the confidentiality obligations both sides accept in the Buyer and Owner Terms. Receiving parties may use it only for evaluating the transaction.
Follow-ups and resolution
Gaps and inconsistencies get chased. This is the stage that rewards preparation and punishes reconstruction.
The areas that decide deals
Licensing and bonding, state by state, and whether they transfer. Regulatory and complaint history, including anything pending. Client contracts and their assignment and termination terms. Data security and privacy practices, which in this industry carry consumer-protection exposure well beyond the balance sheet.
Financially, the recurring questions are client concentration, receivables ageing, and whether recovery rates are consistent across portfolio types and vintages or carried by one unusually good book.
Confidentiality runs both ways
Both the Buyer Terms and the Owner Terms bind the receiving party: protect the other side's non-public information, use it only as permitted, share it only with people who need it and are under comparable obligations, and return or destroy it on request.
Under Basic Service, only a limited subset of a seller's information is displayed at all. Identity, contact details and detailed financials are not public, and communications route through Acquire Marketplace until the parties are introduced.
What we are not
We are not a party to the transaction, and we do not audit, verify or endorse what either side provides. Sellers represent that their information is accurate and not misleading; we do not independently confirm it.
Retain your own legal, tax and financial advisers. Where you want help assembling or reviewing a diligence package, that is available as a separately engaged service, quoted by scope.
Acquire Marketplace is a marketplace and information service. We do not act as your broker, agent or fiduciary, and nothing here is legal, tax, accounting or investment advice — see the Owner Terms of Service. Fees for optional services are quoted by scope; see pricing.