While the concepts of Artificial Intelligence have been understood for several years, its application to solve common business problems has been relatively limited. This article discusses the development and use of AI in the debt collection industry. The system was initially developed for use in the United States where over US$ 80 billion is annually written-off to bad debt, and about 1.5 million bad checks are processed every day! There are about 6000 collection agencies that recover about 20% of the accounts written-off to bad debt - These companies also assist first party-lenders with the follow-up of current receivables. These are usually referred to as "early-out" programs.

RMEx was conceived in the beginning of 1990. The collection industry was in desperate need of new ways to be more productive in the core operations within the collection cycle. We recognized the trend towards lower fees, higher costs and more demanding clients. This meant that in the absence of a miracle, we would have to look to the solution that was rescuing the major auto-makers and IBM from their financial woes – technology. We had identified several areas that needed attention in order to offer us the chance for a quantum leap in productivity. These areas were –