News/Events

Upcoming conferences that UCB will be attending and/or exhibiting:

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Collection Agency Meets BCP "Gold Standard"

July 11, 2006

United Collection Bureau, Inc., a nationwide collection agency with headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, today announced full compliance with all Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery provisions of the various regulations and guidelines that are relevant to collection agency operations, including:

• DRI: Disaster Recovery Institute guidelines
• BCI: Business Continuity Institute guidelines
• ISO: International Organization for Standardization 17799 guidelines
• HIPAA: The Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
• NIST: National Institute of Standards & Technology SP 800-34
• NFPA: National Fire Protection Association 1600 guidelines
• FFIEC: Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s Business Continuity Work Program
• COBIT: Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology
• COSO: Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission

To achieve this level of resiliency against potential downtime, compliance with so many varying standards, and competitiveness in the market as creditors seek to lower risk, UCB chose Strategic BCP (www.strategicbcp.com) and their         industry-leading software tool, ResilienceONE.

This announcement highlights UCB’s commitment to lowering risk for creditors in all sectors, including financial/bankcard, healthcare, government, student loans, commercial, telecom, and utility. UCB’s investment in ResilienceONE ensures minimal downtime and impact on clients’ cash flow in the event of any incident that could affect operations in UCB’s call centers located throughout Ohio, Michigan, and Florida.

“UCB chose to take on a significant effort and investment to achieve compliance with multiple standards for business resumption and continuity in order to provide our clients in all markets with protection against risk. The program is an ‘all hazards’ approach so that we are prepared for interruption to operations for any reason. The process itself was very rewarding as it forced us to look at each critical and         non-critical function and assess risk, as well as validate current processes and procedures. We are very proud of this high level accomplishment and the value it brings to our company and our clients,” noted Jeff Horner, Vice President Business Development.

Strategic BCP announced it completed its mapping of the business continuity “genome” for collection agencies and creditors earlier this year, effectively creating a single Business Continuity “gold standard” for the industry. ResilienceONE combines compliance with all applicable guidelines into one, easy-to-use interface, combining more than 100 separate requirements into a weighted, best-practices approach to Business Continuity for collection agencies and creditors.

“Historically the industry has had to try to comply with these standards on a piecemeal basis, with exorbitant costs in time and money and no assurance of full compliance,” noted Frank Perlmutter, president of Strategic BCP. “UCB is now positioned to comply better, compete better, and recover faster if anything should occur.”

With the emergence of Strategic BCP’s “gold standard” for Business Continuity, the firm offers creditors and collection agencies the ability to compare their own Business Continuity plans against it. Strategic BCP’s “Uniform Scorecard” is available by contacting the firm at 800-594-SBCP. With the Uniform Scorecard, organizations can determine how compliant and resilient they are, providing the ability to better compete for new business and gain greater levels of resiliency in the face of any threat.

“This plan gives all the operations and management personnel at UCB a high level of comfort knowing that there is an immediate action plan and play book to use in the event of any interruption. I sleep much better at night, and therefore so do UCB’s clients,” said Sanju Sharma, UCB’s Chief Operations Officer – Executive Vice President, Financial Services Division.