Debt payment is beautiful

Forgiving debts has never been profitable, and especially today. But how to ask a partner / customer - to emphasize what is needed - to settle accounts with you on all counts and at the same time maintain good and trusting relations with him? One of the options is to outsource debt collection to independent entities, such as collection agencies. Evgenia Bubnova studied the details of working with collection agencies.

The term "collection", that is, collection of debts from unreliable borrowers, came into Russian from English, where it meant "collecting". But this does not mean that before his appearance, debts in Russia were not collected. The most ancient example of incorrect collection in Russian history is the tragic story of Prince Igor and his squad. In 945, Prince Igor immediately after the masterful and bloody collection of tribute from the Drevlyans made another unplanned raid, for which he paid with his life. But the insidious Drevlyans did not manage to live for a long time in a tax-free paradise - Igor's wife, Princess Olga, incinerated the capital of those lands, killed a mass of the population, and imposed a heavy tribute on the lucky survivors. Thus, after this tragic incident, the procedure for collecting tribute was regulated, and today it is a legally regulated operation, which professional collectors offer to perform.

Two directions of work of collectors

On the Russian market today there are two main areas of collection services - credit and corporate.

First came credit collection - collecting a large amount of the same type of debt. As a rule, debtors in this case are mainly individuals. According to the Association for the Development of Collection Business (ARKB), about 80% of overdue debts are in consumer and car loans, and about 10% are in mortgages.

The market structure began to change in 2007, when non-financial organizations began to resort to the services of collection agencies: large wholesale suppliers, construction and transportation companies, including shoe companies. So, for example, in the same 2007 year, the Russian company CJSC VIYUS & K, engaged in the wholesale supply of one of the elite shoe brands, decided to transfer the work of collecting debt from contractors to outsourcing. Her choice fell on one of the leaders in the collection market - the YUSB Center agency. The problem was solved in the same year, and today the shoe company continues to work with the same collectors. Therefore, intensive development receives another direction of collection - corporate. This is the collection of debts arising from relations between organizations. In this case, the characteristics of debt (uniformity, indisputability) are fading into the background, and the most important criterion is the complexity of services, that is, the totality of legal, informational and psychological ways of influencing the debtor.

It is these methods of influence that are the main for collectors of our time, unlike the squad of Prince Igor, who most often used the method of brute force.

On the legal side, the work of collectors is regulated by the norms of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the Civil and Arbitration Procedural Codes, as well as the laws “On Bail” and “On Enforcement Proceedings”.

The psychological aspect was explained by Irina Poddubnaya, Deputy General Director and Business Development Director of Sequoia Credit Consolidation CJSC: “Employees of a professional agency always act exclusively within the law and use only the correct working methods. Accordingly, the client does not bear any reputational risks. Agency employees negotiate with representatives of debtor companies and explain the consequences of non-payment of debt. If the problem cannot be solved in the pre-trial procedure, employees of the collection agency can represent the interests of the client in court. The agency’s professional work ends with full repayment of the debt. ”

The cost of agency services is usually calculated individually. Let us give an example: one of the collection companies in St. Petersburg asks 30 000 rubles for establishing the location and legal capacity of a legal entity debtor. If the client decides to collect the debt with the help of this collection office, he will have to share 15 percent of the amount of debt returned in pre-trial order and 25 percent if the case is being considered in court.

Collection companies, as a rule, do not limit clients in the "age" of debt. Banks, for example, prefer to transfer rather “old” bad debts to collection agencies. This is due to the fact that to ensure the recovery of the “old” delay (from 6 months or more), the lender needs to use more active and, therefore, more costly working methods (trips, lengthy telephone calls, etc.). Collectors usually try to keep within six months of “courtship” for the debtor. But, as we said above, each case is individual.

How is the process organized

The refund process is divided into several stages: telephone, personal negotiations with debtors, representing the interests of the creditor in court, work with bailiffs in the framework of enforcement proceedings. As a rule, collectors are ready to join the process at any stage of pre-trial and enforcement proceedings.

Unfortunately, in the classical view, the collector, or the debt collector, is a brutal leatherhead man with good arguments in his hands. This is far from always the case.

“Professional lawyers deal with debts of legal entities at Sequoia Credit Consolidation Agency, they negotiate with representatives of the debtor company, and can also represent the interests of the agency’s client in court,” explains Irina Poddubnaya, “contact center specialists work with debtors as individuals or specialists of the department of exit collection, who hold personal meetings. The contact center mainly employs young people and girls — the last-year students, mainly law faculties, and only men work in the exit collection group. ”

But, unfortunately, there are pseudo-collection companies that use proven dashing nineties receivers (see sidebar). To protect yourself, it is worth contacting one of the two associations, they follow corporate ethics and guarantee the correctness of the work of their members. There are two large associations in Russia: ARKB (Association for the Development of Collection Business) and NAPKA (National Association of Collection Agencies). The latter was created by the leaders of the collection services market: Debt Agency Pristav LLC, Sequoia Credit Consolidation CJSC and Financial Collection Collection Agency CJSC (FASP) with the participation of the Association of Regional Banks Russia. The association also includes LLC “Interregional Debt Center”, LLC “MORGAN AND STAUT”, LLC “Capital Collection Agency” and LLC “First Collection Bureau”. The ARKB consists of 40 organizations from 27 cities of Russia and the CIS.

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Membership in the association speaks of the delicacy and recognition of the collection agency. The competition between NAPCA and ARKB stimulates the dynamic development of the collection market in Russia. Both of these associations are developing alternative draft laws on collection activities, while the approach of the ARKB, which advocates for self-regulation of collection activities and the absence of excessive restrictions on the authorized capital proposed by NAPCA, is more adequate to the general orientation towards replacing state regulation with self-regulation.

Three collector majors

Russian collectors had three ancestors: banks, security agencies and law firms. It is logical that the specialization of the agency coincides with the source of its origin.

Agencies that specialize in working with banks are usually founded by top managers of banks (the aforementioned “Sequoia Credit Consolidation”, the debt agency “Bailiff”, etc.). They are distinguished by large-scale investments in business development, the use of information, personnel and other technologies similar to banking, and the presence of ties in the banking community. High professionalism and significant financial investments in development could not but affect the price of services. Typically, such agencies take more than 15% of the value of the entire debt portfolio, unlike 10-15% of their colleagues. It is worth mentioning here that we are considering situations where the limitation period has not passed. Otherwise, collectors take from 30%. Most banking collection agencies are concentrated in Moscow and are gradually creating a regional network. The aforementioned, for example, Sequoia Credit Consolidation, has 16 branches in Russia and is present in 22 regions of the country.

The main trump card of the descendant agencies of law firms (the Center YUSB Agency, the INTELLECT-S Collection Agency, etc.) is the established work with the courts. In addition to this pleasure, they offer a full subscription legal service.

Security collection agencies effectively interact with law enforcement agencies, they have experience of effective persuasion under the law and a stern reputation. Organizations of this type tend to deal with large amounts of debt.

Collection agencies are usually accepted for debts of 25 thousand rubles, but when it comes to consumer loans, the amount can be absolutely any.

The situation in the market

The global financial and economic crisis is the heyday of collection agencies.

Market participants have experienced a sharp influx of customers since October 2008. At the same time, the debts transferred to collectors were significantly “younger”: if earlier the minimum delay with which companies contacted reached 180 days, now there are portfolios where it is less than 90 days. It is worth noting that collection agencies are reluctant to take on "old" debts. With each month past due, the negligent borrower loses hope more and more, and the chances of the bank or just the lender to repay the debt are inexorably tending to zero.

If you do not want to take on your own business, then it is better to entrust the unpleasant procedure for collecting debts to professionals. And there are a lot of them around. The main thing is to separate the grain from the chaff in time and find qualified specialists.

For your information:

Each coin has two sides - by some mastodon of collection, unfortunately, “patsian” ambitions are also inherent. We will tell only one story from the practice of working with individuals. A man took a loan from the bank in 100 thousand rubles for the purchase of a super TV. He paid a couple of months, and then he was cut off from work. The man answered emphatically with all persuasions and exhortations of the bank to return the debt "in a good way". The bank sold for 10% the right of claim to a collection agency. Agency employees “met” a man in a movie theater and after a crazy tea party at a corporate cottage, the debtor repented of his sins and the next day he sold his apartment in Shabolovka (naturally, an affiliate with collectors) for 2 million rubles. The money was used to pay off the principal, interest, penalties and fines. The man was left with change - 1,5 million rubles. Without thinking twice, he turned to the prosecutor's office, and the agency paid with a license.