U.S. Collector Forms Joint Venture Partnership With Indian BPO Firm

MRS Associates, Inc., a U.S.-based Accounts Receivable Management/Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company, and Spanco Telesystems and Solutions Ltd., a publicly-traded, India-based BPO, announce an exclusive joint venture servicing partnership. As a result of the venture, each partner will be able to provide an expanded suite of accounts receivable management services and customer care solutions to better serve global clients.

MRS, privately held and headquartered in Cherry Hill, NJ, adds offshore capabilities to its domestic collections business. Moreover, the combination provides an array of services from customer care to first party collections and expanded late stage receivables solutions.

“Over the past 15 years, we have developed one of the nation’s leading domestic collections businesses,” said MRS Co-Chairman/CEO Jeff Freedman. “As we move forward, we need to match our services with the needs of our clients. This joint venture provides us an extensive, integrated suite of services to meet those needs seamlessly for customers of any scale.”

Spanco is based in Mumbai, India. It is known internationally for its business process outsourcing services. It is also a leader in providing customer service and customer support. Spanco’s Respondez division will be working directly with MRS.

“As experts in our respective core business services, this joint venture partnership truly encompasses the notion that the sum is greater than the individual parts”, adds Freedman.

MRS has built a reputation for its outstanding training capabilities, the lynchpin to success in collections. MRS Training and Operations personnel are already at Spanco’s Mumbai headquarters to train Spanco’s collections staff.

Saul Freedman, MRS Co-Chairman/CEO, stressed that, for MRS, this is an expansion of capabilities rather than a transfer. “This program is an increment to our domestic capabilities. As for our current domestic operations, we have built an infrastructure that can accommodate 60-70% near-term growth, which will provide some 350-500 new jobs.”

MRS’s joint venture with Spanco represents the second phase of a program that began with the expansion of MRS’s offices in Arizona and Ohio. Spanco Managing Director Rajesh Chhabria stressed that Spanco’s process capabilities and MRS’s training input would strengthen both partners’ business: “There are two major factors in collections and BPO?process and training. The more we invest in training, the more capable our staff will be when it comes to leveraging and exploiting our process efficiencies and operational capabilities, building on the strength of MRS’s reputation in the collections space, and their focus on training.” Chhabria added, “We will add 500 to 700 FTEs in the first-party and third-party collections portfolio. Our respective rosters of multinational clients complement one another and our combined resources will enable us to serve a broader range of clients and their needs through a best shoring solution.”

MRS Associates is a nationally licensed full-service account receivables management company that specializes in financial and commercial portfolios – bank and retail credit card programs, consumer loans, auto deficiencies and commercial collections as well as government, taxation and educational debts. Its history of achievement encompasses servicing several of the Top 20 Fortune 1000 financial services organizations as well as major automotive finance and debt purchasing organizations across the country. Since its inception in 1991, MRS has successfully built a multi faceted, multi location collections/BPO company with significant financial strength. www.mrsassociates.com

Spanco Telesystems and Solutions is an Indian company, publicly-traded on the Bombay Stock Exchange (Scrip ID Spanco). The company has over 3500 employees in its three business units including (1) offshore call center outsourcing (for US and UK customers), (2) domestic outsourcing (for subsidiaries of well-known MNCs and corporate customers in India), and (3) telecom integration. The company?s call centers are located in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Pune. In February 2006, Spanco was ranked #397 in the ET500 list from the Economic Times, India?s financial paper of record, analogous to the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.