How to Buy Debt | Charged-Off Portfolio Guide
How to buy debt as an operating company: purchase criteria, NDA, tape review, percent-of-face bid, PSA, and boarding. Institutional only.
Updated October 4, 2026 · Triton Financial Solutions
How do you buy debt?
How to buy debt as an operating company: write purchase criteria, sign an NDA, underwrite the tape, bid in percent of face or bps, fund the PSA, and board. RMAI or ACA membership is a plus, not a gate.
How professional buyers evaluate charged-off portfolios before capital is committed.
Operating model
Confirm how you will service (in-house vs agency), and your compliance program maturity.
Diligence framework
- Vintage and payment history quality
- Balance distribution and geographic concentration
- Prior placements and recovery signals
- Media / documentation completeness
- Title and assignment integrity
Pricing discipline
Model expected gross recoveries, cost to collect, timeline, and risk adjustments for docs and compliance friction.
One purchase, from criteria to boarding
A buyer has already been accepted on the buyer page. The criteria are charged-off bankcards, 2023 and newer, media on 70 percent or better, twelve named states, bids in percent of face. A seller snapshot matches. The NDA is signed on a Tuesday. The tape arrives Wednesday with balance, charge-off date, last payment, state, and a media flag on each row.
The buyer samples 40 accounts. Thirty-one have a contract and a charge-off statement. Four are outside the states named in the criteria. Two are marked settled in the seller’s notes and were still in the face. The buyer’s bid is a percent of the face that remains after those six are treated as exclusions, with a condition that the sample’s media rate holds on a larger pull. The seller accepts. Cut-off is the following Friday. The wire lands the Tuesday after. The warranty starts then, after closing and funding, and runs 90 days. The seller forwards the debtors. Boarding is the buyer’s work, on the buyer’s system.
That is the motion. Skipping the sample, or bidding the gross face while planning to argue exclusions later, is how a close slips out of the 3 to 14 day window.
Checklist before you bid
| Check | A pass looks like |
|---|---|
| Criteria | Product, window, states, and size are written down and match this file. |
| Tape | The core fields are populated. Blank charge-off dates are a stop. |
| Media | A sample matches the percent the seller quoted. The checklist names the documents. |
| Exclusions | Deceased, settled, and bankrupt are flagged against the cut-off, not discovered after funding. |
| Bid unit | Percent of unpaid principal, and the face figure the percent applies to. |
| After the wire | You can board. The seller will forward debtors and will not keep servicing them. |
Discussion ranges to orient the bid, not to replace it, are on the pricing study. Sourcing choices are on where to buy debt online.
Questions during a first purchase
Should the first bid be the top of the published range?
Only if the file is new, well documented, and inside the criteria you stated. The published bands are conversation ranges. A 2023 card file with thin media does not start at the top of the card band.
Who collects after funding?
The buyer. The seller’s job after the wire is to forward the debtors and to stand behind the warranty. The seller does not keep a servicing team on the accounts.
What if the sample is worse than the tape’s media flag?
Bid the sample, or walk. A flag that says “media yes” and a file that does not open is a reason to reprice before the agreement, not after.