Case Study: Shelby County Trustee achieves $6M revenue increase and boosts tax collection productivity with FICO® Debt Manager™

Shelby County Boosts Tax Collection Productivity with FICO® Debt Manager™ Solution

The Office of the Shelby County Trustee, which manages property-tax and other receivables for more than 940,000 residents and where property taxes fund over 60% of the county budget, faced falling real estate values and a shrinking tax base. With limited funding and no appetite to add overhead, the office needed to increase current and delinquent tax collections and improve outreach and performance visibility across its small collections team.

Shelby County implemented the FICO® Debt Manager™ solution integrated with its STAR platform to add analytics-driven prioritization, collector-account matching, performance tracking, automated workflows and new communications channels (including SMS). Within a year collections rose from 94.23% to 95.03%—an 80 basis-point gain that produced about $6 million additional revenue in the first 120 days of delinquency—while collector productivity and engagement improved (including a merit-based Elite Collector program) and the office saw strong ROI from new channels and won new municipal business.

Shelby County Trustee

Debra Gates

Chief Administrative Officer