Bilingual Recovery Specialist

PenFed Credit Union; San Antonio (TX); On-site; USD 37,000 - 57,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus

Reasonable accommodations

Job summary

PenFed Credit Union is hiring a Bilingual Recovery Specialist to manage recovery of charged-off consumer loans in onsite (San Antonio, TX) service center. The role combines analysis, negotiation, and communication across manual and automated processes to maximize recovery and establish appropriate repayment plans.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, accounting, finance, or related field.
• Minimum 4 years’ collection/recovery experience, preferably at a financial institution.
• Minimum 4 years’ call center collections or customer service experience.
• Minimum 2 years of pipeline management and/or sales negotiation experience.
• Minimum 1 year of deep skip training and fraud investigation experience.
• Understanding of financial counseling concepts and repayment options.
• Proven ability to meet goals in a metrics-driven environment.
• Strong written and verbal communication, negotiation, and analytical skills.
• Ability to multi-task and work overtime as needed.
• Fluency in English and Spanish.

Responsibilities

• Manage a pipeline of charged-off loans in manual and automated environments.
• Review charged-off loans to determine action and initiate follow-up with detailed records.
• Use negotiation skills to maximize recovery on each account.
• Collaborate with departments and act as SME for member inquiries.
• Communicate via phone, email, mail, chat, and text to recover debts.
• Review and negotiate settlements within authority; ensure compliance.
• Determine delinquency causes and offer repayment plans, including settlements.
• Handle complex settlements and IRS reporting as needed.
• Cross-train recovery team to avoid single points of failure.
• Perform skip tracing and use credit bureau data to locate members.
• Ensure compliance with FDCPA, UDAAP, TCPA, FCRA and internal policies.
• Maintain daily activity records and report to management.
• Identify options for legal remedies within procedures to recover funds.
• Suggest process improvements to Recovery Operations Management.
• Monitor KPIs and support monthly/quarterly/yearly recovery goals.
• Assist with training and onboarding of new staff.

Skills

Bilingual English/Spanish

Analytical skills

Negotiation skills

Communication skills

MS Office/organization

Education

Bachelor’s degree in business, accounting, finance

Tools

Call center software

Job description

PenFed is hiring a Bilingual Recovery Specialist to work onsite at our San Antonio, Texas Service Center. This role is responsible for the comprehensive management and recovery of charged-off consumer loans and accounts, requiring a strong combination of analytical, negotiation, and communication skills. The specialist will work within both manual and automated collection environments, employing analytical and negotiation skills to maximize recovery on each account. This includes initiating follow-up activities, maintaining meticulous records, and utilizing various communication methods to resolve outstanding debts. A critical aspect of this role involves determining reasons for delinquency and offering appropriate repayment plans, including paid-in-full and settlement options, in accordance with established PenFed procedures.

An equivalent combination of education and experience is considered

• Bachelor’s degree in business, accounting, finance, or another related field is required.
• Minimum of four (4) years’ collection/recovery experience required, preferably at a financial institution.
• Minimum of four (4) years’ experience with call center collections or customer service experience required.
• Minimum of two (2) years of Pipeline Management and/or sales negotiation experience required.
• Minimum of one (1) year of deep skip training and fraud investigation experience required.
• Understanding of preventative, productive and remedial financial counseling is required.
• Proven ability to meet or exceed goals in a metrics driven organization.
• Strong communication, negotiation, analytical, decision-making and written skills.
• Ability to multi-task.
• Available to work weekends, evenings and overtime periodically.
• Must be fluent in both English and Spanish.
• Experience with A.I. tools preferred.

Supervisory Responsibility

This position will not supervise employees.

Licenses and Certifications

Any collections or recovery related certificates recommended.

Work Environment

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly exposed to an indoor office setting with moderate noise.

*Most roles require working in an office setting with moderate noise and the ability to lift 25 pounds.*

Travel

Ability to travel to various worksites and be on-call will not be required.

Pay Transparency

The anticipated starting hourly range for this role is $26.77- $41.27

This position is eligible for an organizational performance based annual bonus, subject to board discretion and approval.

This position is eligible for an individual performance based annual bonus.

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of job duties and the position will perform other duties as assigned.

• Work a pipeline of charged off consumer loans and accounts in both a manual and automated collection environment.
• Reviewing charged off loans to determine course of action to be taken then initiate appropriate follow-up activity, maintaining detailed records of all recovery activities.
• Use analytical and negotiation skills to recover the top dollar on each account worked.
• Collaborate and assist other departments and individuals within PenFed regarding members and 3rd party inquiries acting as a SME and elevate to appropriate channels as needed.
• Uses various communication methods to work and cure outstanding debts on PenFed accounts including telephone, email, mail, chat and text message.
• Review and negotiate settlement and short sale arrangements with members within their settlement authority level.
• Determine the reason for delinquency and provide options and/or repayment plans including paid in full and settlement ensuring to use approved internal procedures and policies to assist the member directly or through debt settlement companies.
• Work and solve complex scenarios such as settlements and the corresponding agreements and IRS reporting.
• Cross train and support functions of post charge off recovery team ensuring no single point of failure exists.
• Using skip tracing methods, credit bureau information and application data contact third parties such as relatives of the delinquent member, employers, personnel officers, creditors on credit bureaus for determining location/whereabouts of the member.
• Assist with maintaining PenFed’s compliance with all applicable federal, state and local laws, regulations and ordinances by abiding by PenFed’s compliance program and all policies, procedures, rules and regulations including and not limited to FDCPA, UDAAP, TCPA, and FCRA.
• Maintain records of all daily activities and report to Mgr Collections Recovery as needed.
• Identify options for writs of attachments, offsets, legal remedies and cross collateralization within prescribed Credit Union procedures to recover charged-off funds.
• Identify and provide feedback on bottlenecks, work stoppages, and opportunities for process improvement to the Recovery Operations Management team.
• Monitor quality and quantity of work to meet individual KPIs, and goals. Work with the recovery team to meet monthly, quarterly and yearly recovery collection goals.
• Assist with other projects as necessary, which can include training and shadowing of new employees.