ACA Fall Forum 2026 lands at an unusually useful moment for collection agency leaders.
The in-person event runs November 4–6 at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, bringing together professionals across the accounts receivable management industry to compare strategies, discuss emerging technology, and prepare for the year ahead.
That timing matters. The forum falls immediately after the 2026 U.S. midterm elections, when every House seat and roughly one-third of Senate seats are up for election. For ARM professionals, that makes discussions around regulation, compliance, advocacy, technology, and risk management especially timely.
But the value of the ACA Fall Forum is not simply sitting through as many presentations as possible.
The better strategy is to arrive with a few questions your agency needs answered, choose sessions that address those questions, and leave with ideas you can actually put into operation.
Here are our four picks for collection agency leaders attending this year.
Why ACA Fall Forum 2026 Is Worth Attending
ACA International events cover a wide range of issues affecting third-party collection agencies, creditors, law firms, technology providers, and other participants in the ARM industry.
Fall Forum is particularly well suited to leaders who want more interaction than they might get from a webinar or a large conference hall.
This year’s format emphasizes peer conversations, practical workshops, networking opportunities, and technology discussions that agency leaders can translate into operating decisions.
That makes it a useful event for agency owners and operators asking questions like:
- Where should we be investing in technology next?
- How are other agencies implementing artificial intelligence?
- Which operational processes deserve attention before 2027?
- What changes in Washington could affect the ARM industry?
- How are other leaders balancing efficiency with compliance?
- Which ideas are actually working inside comparable agencies?
The point is to come back with a short list of actions worth testing.
Pick #1: Kick-Off by ACA President Jeff DiMatteo
Thursday, November 5 | 8:45–8:55 AM
Start Thursday morning with the general kick-off from ACA International President Jeff DiMatteo.
It is only a short session, but it provides context for everything that follows.
Agency leaders spend most of the year deep inside their own portfolios, clients, teams, software, compliance questions, and recovery goals. An industry conference gives you a rare chance to pull the camera back.
Listen for the themes ACA believes will define the coming year.
Are association members talking primarily about compliance? Technology adoption? Staffing? Consumer communication? Artificial intelligence? Client expectations? Regulatory uncertainty?
Those themes can help you decide which conversations to pursue during the rest of the forum.
There is also a networking advantage to attending the kick-off rather than arriving late. You begin the day in the same room as other ACA members and ARM professionals before everyone disperses into separate sessions.
Pick #2: Fresh Off the Press: Post-Election Power Shifts & What Comes Next for the ARM Industry
Thursday, November 5 | 8:55–9:45 AM
Immediately after the kick-off, stay for the main-stage session on the post-election environment.
The session features Jack W. Brown III, Leah Dempsey, Nadeam A. Elshami, and Zach Pfister, with members of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck participating through ACA’s advocacy efforts.
Because the 2026 midterm elections take place in November, the session is positioned to examine what the new congressional landscape may mean for the accounts receivable management industry.
For collection agency leaders, the practical value is not political speculation. It is understanding what industry advocates are watching next.
Listen for discussion around:
- Legislative priorities relevant to third-party collection agencies
- Regulatory and compliance issues that may receive attention
- Areas of potential uncertainty heading into 2027
- Issues agency compliance and risk management teams should monitor
- How ACA International expects to approach advocacy in the new environment
This is also a good session to attend with your compliance leader if more than one person from your agency is traveling.
You do not need to leave with predictions. Leave with a clearer monitoring list.
Pick #3: Recovery CAFÉ: Technology
Thursday, November 5 | 2:00–3:00 PM
If you attend one technology session at ACA Fall Forum, make it this one.
Recovery CAFÉ: Technology is structured differently from a traditional panel. Participants rotate through three technology-focused discussion tables, spending roughly 20 minutes at each. Moderators carry themes from one group into the next, allowing the conversation to build throughout the hour.
Speakers include John Coppola of Balanced Healthcare Receivables, Rob Grafrath of Grafrath Consulting, and Stevens Rodriguez of Debt Dynamics Solutions.
That format matters because technology decisions in collections rarely have one universal answer.
Two agencies may both be evaluating artificial intelligence but have entirely different priorities. One may want to automate inbound calls. Another may be focused on account segmentation. Another may care most about reporting, workflow automation, or integrating a new payment provider.
The useful questions are operational:
- Where is AI actually being deployed today?
- What should remain human-controlled?
- Which workflows are teams successfully automating?
- How are agencies measuring whether new technology is working?
- Where are integrations still creating friction?
- Which tasks consume staff time without improving recovery?
Aktos sees the same distinction when working with collection agencies. Modern technology becomes valuable when it connects directly to the account and workflow, not when it exists as another disconnected tool. That applies to AI phone agents, omnichannel communications, payments, client reporting, and workflow automation.
Go into the Recovery CAFÉ with one specific workflow you want to improve. You will get much more from the discussion than if your question is simply, “What is everyone doing with AI?”
Pick #4: Building High-Performing Receivables Operations
Friday, November 6 | 9:40–10:40 AM
The final pick is Building High-Performing Receivables Operations: A Framework for Leading Continuous Improvement.
Speakers Megan J. Hebert, Kelly Parsons-O’Brien, and Calder Willingham will introduce the IMPROVE Framework, designed to help receivables leaders identify operational problems, separate symptoms from root causes, evaluate possible solutions, and build practical plans for sustainable improvement.
That is a useful discipline for collection agencies because operational problems often look deceptively simple.
A manager might say: “Collectors are spending too much time on this queue.”
But what is actually causing it?
Maybe account routing is wrong. Maybe collectors are repeatedly completing an administrative task that could be automated. Maybe data arrives inconsistently from creditors. Maybe a payment event is not updating the account quickly enough. Maybe reporting does not expose the bottleneck.
Adding staff before understanding the problem can simply scale the inefficiency.
The same principle applies to compliance. Modern systems can support audit trails, jurisdiction-specific rules, automated workflows, reporting, and other controls, but technology works best when the underlying operational process has been clearly defined first.
Come to this workshop with a real challenge from your own agency.
That could be:
- Slow account onboarding
- Too much manual payment follow-up
- Collector queues that require constant adjustment
- Dispute workflows with too many handoffs
- Client reports that require manual preparation
- Compliance checks performed outside the core system
- A process that gets noticeably harder as account volume grows
Using a real problem will make the workshop immediately more valuable.
Meet Aktos at Fall Forum
Aktos is sponsoring and exhibiting at ACA Fall Forum 2026. Stop by to talk with our team about the collection workflows you want to improve.
A Suggested ACA Fall Forum Itinerary
You do not need to attend everything to get a strong return from the trip.
Here is a simple way to structure the conference.
Wednesday, November 4: Build Your Network
Use the first day to orient yourself and start conversations before the schedule gets crowded.
Review the attendee list and identify a few people you would genuinely like to meet.
Do not limit your networking to vendors.
Talk to operators at agencies with similar client mixes, account volumes, technology challenges, or growth plans. Some of the most useful conference conversations happen when two agency leaders compare how they solve the same problem differently.
Thursday, November 5: Policy + Technology
Start with:
8:45 AM: Kick-Off by ACA President Jeff DiMatteo
Then stay seated for:
8:55 AM: Fresh Off the Press: Post-Election Power Shifts & What Comes Next for the ARM Industry
Use the middle of the day for other relevant sessions and meetings.
Then block:
2:00 PM: Recovery CAFÉ: Technology
By the end of Thursday, you should have two lists: external changes to watch and internal technology ideas worth exploring.
Friday, November 6: Turn Ideas Into an Operating Plan
Finish with:
9:40 AM: Building High-Performing Receivables Operations: A Framework for Leading Continuous Improvement
Take one problem from your agency into the workshop.
Before leaving Scottsdale, turn your notes into three categories:
- Do now: something the team can change immediately.
- Investigate: something that deserves a deeper conversation.
- Watch: an industry, compliance, or technology development to monitor.
That is far more useful than returning with an overflowing notebook and no clear next step.
Make the Conference Useful After Scottsdale
The real test of an industry conference comes Monday morning.
Collection leaders already have access to more information than they can possibly consume. ACA International, industry publications, vendors, peers, webinars, and conferences constantly surface new ideas.
What is scarce is implementation.
After the ACA Fall Forum, schedule a short internal debrief while the conversations are still fresh.
Ask:
- What did we learn that changes how we think?
- What confirmed something we already suspected?
- Which idea deserves a small test?
- Which vendor or peer should we follow up with?
- What should compliance review?
- What operational bottleneck should we tackle first?
Then assign an owner.
That last step matters. An insight without an owner often disappears into the conference-notes folder.
ACA Fall Forum 2026 Is About What You Bring Home
The 2026 ACA Fall Forum gives collection agency leaders an opportunity to look beyond day-to-day production and compare notes with the broader ARM industry.
For agencies thinking seriously about AI, automation, reporting, integrations, compliance-aware workflows, and scaling operations, those conversations can also help clarify what your technology should make possible.
If you are attending ACA Fall Forum 2026, bring your hardest operational question with you. You will probably get more value from finding one strong answer than from trying to attend every session.
