Utility Industry Credit & Collections

Secondary Research

The secondary research in Credit and Collections is intended to compare the utility credit and collections function to other industries with emphasis on contrasting the special requirements for utilities.

Utility functions and challenges vs other industries
Overall impact of credit on financial performance and rate cases
Federal and State regulations
Residential vs. Commercial/Industrial Rules
Comparisons of state regulatory environments, either based upon policy or outcomes.
Low income programs

Primary Research

The primary research (questionnaire) will investigate in more depth than our usual survey the credit process of:

Account Initiation, including credit scoring
Managing Customer Accounts, ongoing Monitoring, including behavioral scoring
Collections, including skip tracing and credit agencies
Terminations/Restorations
Customer Assistance Programs

We’ll place special emphasis on drivers over time that impact credit performance, especially the impact of customer demographics, energy prices, and the business cycle

Write-off forecasting based upon macro-economic conditions, especially during periods of economic downturn.
Key demographic criteria that affect performance.

We’ll also examine some of the underlying causes of write-offs, with emphasis on what has come to be called the “revenue protection”.

Customer Behavior
Possible criminal actions which affect write-offs, which includes energy theft, fraud, and usage on inactive accounts Fraud
Internal billing problems, prevention and detection
(Data mining for fraud and theft identification)

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