SAN FRANCISCO — Big brother or new efficiencies in work processes? A new collections solution presented at Finovate Spring 2011 in San Francisco this week raised the question.

The masterQueue solution from Intellaegis, an El Dorado Hills, Calif., company, is a Web-based, business processes workflow that incorporates public records, smartphones, Google maps and other tools to basically function as an electronic skip tracer as well as collections tool.

"It might sound kind of big brother, but I can tell you that from a collection standpoint, it's definitely worth looking into, I thought," said Howie Wu, vice president of virtual banking at $9.6 billion BECU in Seattle. "Taking all that public data and putting it in one place addresses one of the real challenges in collections these days. And while it sounds a little intimidating, pay your bills and you don't have to worry about it, I guess."