LAS VEGAS — PNC Financial Services is leaning on digital outreach to decrease defaults and communicate with borrowers at risk of delinquency.  

“We’re up to about 85% of unique delinquent customers receiving some sort of digital outreach,” Anthony Hark, senior vice president of collections and recovery at PNC, said during CBA Live. The rate of digital outreach is up from about 30% just a few years ago.  

PNC’s rate of “newly delinquent consumers” has risen 25% to 30%, Hark said. Those consumers are defined as borrowers who weren’t past due on their loans during the past 12 months but now are late on payments. 

“We assume that a lot of those are newer customers and younger customers and that this is their first time being past due,” he said. “We’re focused on that population, and we’ve increased the digital outreach to that population. 

“We’re assuming that these first-time delinquent customers are also newer in their credit journey and life cycle,” Hark said. “Then we assume that because they’re younger that they want some of that digital interaction and they don’t want to pick up the phone and be bothered. It’s definitely on our radar to dig further into that.”