Jim McDermott of Coface Collections Elected to CCAA Council

Jim McDermott, Chief Operating Officer of Coface Collections North America, Inc., has been elected as an agency representative of the Council of the Commercial Collection Agency Association (CCAA) of the Commercial Law League of America, the company announced Tuesday. McDermott’s term will begin at the CLLA annual meeting in Chicago in April.

The Commercial Collection Agency Association (CCAA), with over 110 member agencies, represents the most prestigious commercial collection agencies in the United States. The CCAA works to elevate the standards of the commercial collections industry by providing educational, legislative, promotional and administrative services to its members. Established in 1972, the CCAA is part of the Commercial Law League of America, the oldest creditors’ rights organization in the country.

“I’m thrilled to become an agency member of the CCAA Council,” said McDermott. “The CCAA is the top organization in our industry, and I am looking forward to the enriching experience of participating in the Council. I hope that my years of experience will also allow me to positively contribute to the CCAA organization.”

Membership in the CCAA, whose members are the only collection agencies in the United States certified by the Commercial Law League of America, is limited to those select agencies in the country who continue to meet CCAA’s rigorous criteria. These standards include adherence to a strict code of ethics, placing creditor monies in a separate trust account and posting a surety bond to protect creditors.

Jim McDermott has 15 years of experience in commercial collections at Coface Collections North America, Inc. and predecessor companies. He has served as Chief Operations Officer at Coface Collections for three years. Prior to that, he was manager of the Vancouver, Washington branch office, growing the office from a start-up with three sales people to the company’s largest profit center in a three-year time period. Mr. McDermott is a graduate of Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington and attended the Louvain School of Management in Brussels, Belgium.

Coface Collections North America, Inc. (CCNA) is a subsidiary of Coface North America, and provides commercial debt recovery services in the United States and abroad.  The company was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Metairie, Louisiana.

Coface‘s mission is to facilitate global business-to-business trade by offering its 135,000 customers solutions to fully or partly outsource trade relationship management and to finance and protect their receivables: credit insurance, factoring, business information and receivables management. Coface is a subsidiary of Natixis whose share capital (Tier 1) was 16.8 billion Euros at the end of December 2010.