Coast Collection Fee Memo
UCPath has partnered with a collection agency, Coast, to manage older overpayment accounts. These include accounts where overpayments have not been collected, or a repayment agreement has not been established, within 120 days of the original notice.
Accounts dating back to 2023 are currently with Coast. Due to the delay in securing a collection agency, some accounts have been uncollected for several years. Now that payments are being made, fees are being assessed.
An 18% fee is assessed on every payment Coast collects. This fee is charged to UCPath, which then recharges it to our location. At that point, BFS Payroll will contact the department responsible for the original overpayment record to request a Common Chart of Accounts (CCOA) for the recharge.
BFS receives a list of employees scheduled to be sent to Coast. Moving forward, BFS will reach out to affected departments and employees one final time to attempt to collect the balance or establish a repayment plan before the account is transferred.
Currently, BFS has a list of employee accounts that are at Coast. If the department would like to know which of their employees, along with the amount, are with Coast, we encourage them to submit a ServiceNow ticket under the Overpayment Question option.
Additionally, if you have any questions or concerns, please submit a ServiceNow ticket. The Overpayment Question option can also be used for this. Our BFS website will now have an FAQ section for this as well.
If we receive any additional clarification or changes from UCPath, we will communicate those updates to campus.
Overpayment Collections FAQs
What is the 18% collection fee?
UCPath recently contracted with Coast Collections to manage older outstanding overpayment accounts. When Coast Collections successfully recovers any amount, an 18% collection fee is assessed.
This is the first time that departments have heard of Coast Collections and the charges of 18% on collections. Is this a new policy or has this always been the case?
This is a new process. After several years of searching, UCPath found a collection agency to manage their older accounts. The 18% fee was not communicated to the location until recently, which is when the communications started going out.
If this is a new policy, is it effective immediately?
As far as we know, there is no policy in place yet that discusses the fee. As such, there is no effective date for this process.
An overpayment from 2021 generated a fee, and we were contacted by payroll asking for FRU-fund to assess the 18% fee. If this is a new policy, why would an overpayment from 2021 generate a fee?
Since the process was recently established, older overpayments were included. UCPath had been holding on to overpayments from several years ago. Since Coast has been able to collect on some of these old overpayments, a fee was assessed. Moving forward, we do not anticipate fees coming in from overpayments that far in the past.
Are 19900 funds appropriate to pay those fees or should departments look to provide unrestricted funds?
Although 19900 funds can be used, we advise that departments not only use 19900. We encourage departments to use the fund that was initially used in the overpayment. Certainly, federal funds cannot be used for this.
Is there a report that departments may request on outstanding repayments so they may anticipate any fees? Especially when these assessments go back multiple years.
BFS has a list of accounts that are still outstanding. At the request of the department, we can provide a list of their outstanding balances. We also encourage departments to assist with the collection process. BFS has mainly been in charge of communicating with the employees, but we believe that the department can be instrumental in procuring a response from the employee since they have a working relationship.
How long do we have to provide an adequate CCOA?
Preferably, we would like to have one provided within 2 weeks. We would like to move the charges within the same month we received the list.
What can departments do to help?
Departments should review and address outstanding overpayments as soon as possible to help avoid additional collection fees. Since departments work directly with employees, they can also help get timely responses and resolve outstanding overpayments.