To add to my earlier post in order to dispel the-sky-is-falling...

To add to my earlier post in order to dispel the-sky-is-falling fear, CCP buys the best quality PDLs, mainly charged-off credit card debt. Because banks subject applicants to a degree of credit vetting, which utilities do not, bank PDLs tend to be better quality, and more expensive. This means that the hordes of people running around the USA looting and burning, would tend not to have credit cards, and hence they would form an insignificant percentage of the delinquent debtors in a PDL that CCP is likely to buy.

In the flow of time, the demand for PDLs may rise again when CCP's competitors have more funds, and then CCP can consider lower quality PDLs, but still good quality, provided the price is discounted to match the poorer quality. In the short-term it may be a good idea for CCP to focus on top quality PDLs until it has the collections facilities to work the harder-to-collect PDLs bought from utilities. In the USA, collecting on college debts, and hospital debts is part of the game, but I have no idea how these PDLs rate.

I do not know the industry from the inside, but I assume that a fairly significant percentage of charged off debtors in a quality PDL may simply have moved away, and cannot be traced, but when traced, they fairly readily sort the matter out by settling up, or agreeing to repayment plans. Lump-sum settlements have until recently been more common in the USA than in Australasia, but from reading Encore Capital's financial reports, I have the notion that USA debt buyers are warming up to the agreed-repayment-plan approach that is commonly used by CCP.

On the price of PDLs, I am also in the dark, but I have always thought it was something close to 20c. In an interview with Alan Kohler, Thomas Beregi seemed evasive when asked, and said, something between a few cents and 35 cents in the dollar. I often find when faced with two extremes, that the mid-point is remakably accurate, and (5c + 35c)/2 = 20c. Of course, that may be 17c in one stint of time, and 20c in another time stint.

Although his experience in the PDL game is dated, spider5 worked in the sector for three decades, so he might comment on some of the above, as may someone else with more recent experience, or other sources of knowledge.