2025 Aktos Wrapped
The debt collection industry doesn’t change overnight, but in 2025, the pace of change clearly accelerated.
Rising compliance pressure, tighter client expectations, and growing delinquency across financial services pushed many debt collection agencies to take a hard look at the tools powering their collections process.The message was especially clear: you can’t scale with yesterday’s software.
At Aktos, 2025 was about building for that reality.
This year wasn’t about flashy releases for the sake of buzz. It was about strengthening the foundation of a modern, cloud-based collections platform: one designed to help agencies streamline workflows, improve operational efficiency, and optimize the entire debt recovery lifecycle without adding headcount.
Here’s a look back at what we built, what we learned from the industry, and why it matters if you’re evaluating debt collection software companies heading into 2026.
Why 2025 Was a Turning Point for Collection Agencies
Across the ARM industry, agencies faced the same core challenges:
- Growing accounts receivable volumes with limited staff
- Increasing scrutiny from regulators and clients
- Consumers expecting self-service, digital outreach, and flexible payment options
- Legacy collection systems that couldn’t deliver real-time dashboards, automation, or clean integrations
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, debt collection remains one of the most complained-about areas of consumer finance, reinforcing how costly outdated tools and inconsistent processes can be for agencies trying to scale responsibly.
In response, high-performing agencies are moving toward all-in-one, AI-powered software solutions that support smarter decision-making, cleaner audits, and better customer relationships.
That shift guided everything we worked on at Aktos this year.
Major Product Updates Built for Real-World Collections
Internal Messaging: Secure Communication Where Work Actually Happens
In 2025 we launched in-platform internal messaging built specifically for collection teams that need account-centric, auditable conversations, not a generic chat tool. Too many teams still use email threads or Slack to discuss debtors, disputes, and follow-ups, which scatters PII and breaks auditability. Aktos’ internal messaging keeps communication:
- Permissioned at the agency level
- Threaded at the account and case level
- Fully logged for compliance and review
Collectors, operations leaders, and client-facing teams can now collaborate on accounts without leaking context or exposure to sensitive data. It’s a small change to the workflow that pays big dividends as teams scale.
AI Phone Agent Release
Automation isn’t about replacing collectors: it’s about helping them focus where they add the most value. In 2025 we shipped our AI Phone Agent into production with full inbound and outbound capabilities that integrate into Aktos (not as a bolt-on). Production features today include:
- Full call recording and searchable transcripts
- Mini-Miranda scripting and capture for compliant calls
- TCPA consent capture and handling, plus comprehensive audit logging
- ID verification during calls for positive ID match workflows
- Payment capture during the call with reconciliation metadata
- Robust logging and artifacts to support disputes and compliance reviews
These capabilities are live and in use to help teams scale compliant outreach while preserving traceability and collector oversight.
Learn more: The Rise of Real Gen AI Phone Agents
Developer Portal and Platform Foundations
One thing we hear consistently from growing agencies: “We don’t want to be locked into a closed ecosystem.”
In 2025, we invested heavily in our developer portal and platform capabilities, making it easier to:
- Access key Aktos APIs to send, receive, and update data
- Build integrations with ERPs, payment processors, dialers, and reporting tools
- Support client-specific workflows without custom development
This work improves long-term scalability and reduces reliance on expensive add-ons. It also helps agencies mirror legacy workflows—reports, phases, control logic—during migrations, making end-to-end onboarding smoother and faster.
Client Portal and Payment Processing Improvements
Client expectations are rising. Static reports and emailed spreadsheets no longer cut it.
Based on direct customer feedback, we iterated on:
- Client portal permissions and usability
- Clearer templates and how-to guides
- Invoice workflows and payment processing UX
The result is a more user-friendly, self-service experience that improves transparency and reduces back-office workload, while supporting ACH, credit card, and flexible payment options that help stabilize cash flow.
Platform Reliability and Observability
Under the hood we delivered major platform improvements to support higher throughput and operational confidence: an async job framework and dead-letter queues, migration steps toward Kubernetes and read replicas/denormalizers, plus improved Datadog and Sentry logging. These changes reduce job failures, make retries more predictable, and give ops the visibility to be proactive.
What We Heard from the Industry in 2025
ACA International Conference (Louisville)
At ACA International, we exhibited, ran live demos, and met directly with agency leaders navigating modernization decisions.
The biggest takeaway? Agencies aren’t looking for more features, they’re looking for fewer tools that do more.
Messaging, dashboards, outreach, compliance logic, and reporting all need to live in one collections platform with real-time visibility.
ACA Fall Forum (Chicago)
At Fall Forum, we demoed recent updates and hosted a panel titled “Dialing Into the Future”, focused on AI phone agents.
Discussions reinforced that agencies want AI that:
- Works inside their collections process
- Enforces compliance automatically
- Knows when to escalate to a human
Not experimental tech. Practical automation.
RMAI Conference (Las Vegas) and ARMtech (Nashville)
Across both events, conversations centered on:
- Integrations with existing financial services systems
- Reporting parity with legacy software
- The cost of inefficient workflows on recovery and client trust
Modern debt collection software solutions are becoming a competitive requirement, no longer a “nice-to-have.”
Integrations That Respect Reality
Many agencies can’t just “flip a switch” and abandon existing processes.
In 2025, we completed multiple complex integrations, supporting:
- SFTP and API connectivity
- Legacy reporting formats
- Existing workflows for skip tracing, case routing, and compliance controls
This matters because software transitions fail when platforms force agencies to change everything at once. Our approach is pragmatic: modernize the engine while respecting how agencies actually operate.
What 2025 Proved About Debt Collection Software Companies
A few truths became impossible to ignore:
Legacy systems slow decision-making.
Without real-time dashboards and metrics, leadership teams can’t optimize collection strategies or spot risk early.
Manual workflows don’t scale.
Hiring more staff to manage overdue payments is no longer sustainable.
Consumers expect modern outreach.
SMS, notifications, omnichannel communication, and self-service portals are now baseline expectations, not differentiators.
All-in-one beats bolt-on.
Disconnected add-ons create operational drag, compliance risk, and unpredictable pricing.
Looking Ahead to 2026
Everything we built in 2025 points toward one goal: helping collection agencies do more with less.
In 2026, agencies can expect:
- Deeper AI-powered automation
- More intelligent segmentation and outreach
- Expanded workflows that adapt in real time
- Continued investment in scalability and performance
Not hype. Execution.
Learn more: 2026: The Year AI Collectors Take Over | AI in Debt Collection
Final Thoughts: Aktos is Built for Agencies That Want to Grow
If you’re evaluating debt collection software companies right now, the question isn’t “Does it work?” It’s “Does it help us grow without adding friction?”
Aktos was built for agencies that want:
- Better recovery rates
- Cleaner compliance
- Faster decision-making
- Stronger customer relationships
- A modern, cloud-based collection system that scales with them
2025 laid the foundation. 2026 is where it compounds.
