I'm upvoting this short comment in hopes that you'll share a somewhat longer story about what you tried to do and why it didn't work. Thanks!
Meanwhile, all of my peers were getting rich running unlicensed agencies and lying to debtors. I was getting sued constantly for following the rules. I'd win the lawsuits but it would cost me as much as $30k to fight them.
I employed over 500 people over about 8 years, many of them stole from me, overdosed, or ended up in jail because debt collectors tend to be troubled people. I shifted my focus to building software for the debt industry and went through a startup accelerator. That's when I fell in love with software and sold my agency.
Other than that, I'll answer any specific questions.
I owned a bar/night club for about 5 years. Most of the staff had (or gave me) the same problems.
Q1: As an insider, how feasible is that strategy? Q2: As the collector do you report to credit bureaus that it's cleared? does it have a meaningful impact on debtors' credit?
The credit bureau thing is funny because again, ethically you should but once you do you open yourself up to a LOT more liability. So most agencies won't unless it's an in-house agency for CapitalOne or something.
You as the consumer should always dispute everything on your credit report every so often.
Is it 0.5x, 0.25x, what typical range are you working with?
But I'd guess that direct from the client would be 8%, 1 agency ~1 year old debt would probably cost 5%, 2 agency 2 year old debt probably about 2% and then down to 1% and 75bps after that.
A lot of times you don't turn a profit working zeros. You barely make your money back and then turn a profit reselling it. Small margins but easier to work. Happier employees.