Portion of an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer concerning Unifund and David Rosenberg
Bad debts very, very good for bill collector of last resort
When consumers can't pay, Blue Ash firm steps in
By James McNair
The Cincinnati Enquirer
 Unifund, with David Rosenberg as its majority owner, has clients as big as Citibank and American Express.(Tony Jones photo) |
But all that borrowing produces a lot of financial heartburn. Every year, banks, retailers and other consumer lenders write off more than $70 billion in uncollectible debt, mostly hopelessly overdue credit-card balances. From there, the debts are bundled for auction and scarfed up by companies that pay next to nothing for the opportunity to take one more shot at collecting from deadbeat debtors. It is through that process that about $9 billion in secondhand debt has landed in Greater Cincinnati, ending up at a Blue Ash company called Unifund and its 38-year-old majority owner, David Rosenberg. Unifund feasts on the famine of others. As banks and lenders dump their delinquent consumer debt, Unifund and others happily buy it in bulk for pennies on the dollar. According to Collections & Credit Risk magazine, Unifund boasts one of the nation's biggest inventories of shaky money. From its start in Dayton, Ohio, in 1986, Unifund has quietly become an economic force. It has 45 employees; clients as big as Citibank and American Express; and dealings with banks, retailers and law firms all over the country. Rosenberg also has a project going with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons of New York, involving the issuance of more than 100,000 debit cards to low-income people. All this from someone who yawned his way through school and dropped out of Ohio State University after his freshman year. Rosenberg, born in Izmir, Turkey, moved to Dayton as a child after his father, a civil service engineer, was assigned to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. At 10, he said, he began entertaining thoughts about owning a business. Four years later, he was selling Fuller brushes. At 15, he took a summer job with a collection agency. It soon dawned on him that regular collection methods were largely a waste of time. He also learned debtors were subjected to the practices outlawed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1978. "You had collection agencies that were basically beating people up by phone to attempt to collect in a very short time frame," he said. "It really does take a lot longer for people to rework their situation and regenerate themselves. To call them in some accelerated, urgent 'I only have 60 to 90 days to take care of this with you or it's going to go on to the next process' isn't something that resolves anything for someone who owes money."
Unifund has been a CAC Vendor Member since1994.
For more information about Unifund’s programs
call (513) 489-8877.