How to resolve your business bad debts!

Small and Medium sized businesses are throwing away 286 million man-hours and almost £3.86 billion each year chasing bad debts. What’s more – 74% of SME’s admit that they accept late payment excuses rather than insisting invoices are paid on time. It seems that businesses will do anything, even put themselves at risk, to avoid asking debtors to pay.

Ethicall’s nationwide group of experienced debt negotiators can help. Professional, ethical and empathetic, we visit debtor companies and work out how they can satisfy the debt – and if they can’t we investigate why and report back. If it turns out legal action is the only option, we’ll get the process started at a fraction of the cost of a Solicitor. In short, we’ll remove the time and conflict pressures while you get on with your business!

The importance of Borrower Feedback

At Ethicall we welcome feedback from our client customers.

Whether it is good or bad, feedback helps our business to mould and develop its practices so as to maintain and improve our service. The information card that we leave behind with the borrower not only encourages them to leave valuable feedback but also contains a number of useful contacts that they can turn to for additional and independent help and support thus helping us to drive forward positively good practice of the TCF principles.

Here are a few comments recently left by borrowers who were interviewed by our Field Representatives:

Extremely lovely gentleman. Very considerate and understanding and explained everything to me. Friendly and approachable. 5/31/11 7:06PM

Steve was extremely professional, responding to any questions asked and listened to the information I was giving him. Despite the current situation being a difficult one, he made me feel at ease and treated me as an individual with respect and courtesy, offering sound advice for the future. 5/23/11 2:52PM

To see our very simple survey click on this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JWBGPQ7

Ethicall demonstrates its reach….

Peter Mullen, our Scottish Regional Partner, demonstrates that there is nowhere Ethicall won’t go to satisfy a client’s instructions. In fact Peter was in Wick, which is on the northern-most tip of the British Isles, where he interviewed two customers on behalf of a mortgage company.

Making It All Worthwhile!

Ours is a business in which it’s sometimes very difficult to garner recognition when you do a good job, so forgive us if we make a big noise when such plaudits all too rarely arrive. Here’s a snippet of a note received from one of our mortgage clients after one of their customers wrote in following a visit from our Regional Partner Steve Davis:

“…he was very courteous and polite, very informative, and fair and understanding of both her situation and of ours.  She said he explained everything clearly and she learned a lot of information she wasn’t previously aware of about what we require and what help she can get.”

Makes all the hard work worthwhile!

Making TCF Work

If you have a moment, take a look at www.tcfinfo.co.uk. TCF (Treating Customers Fairly) has quite rightly become the lending industry’s mantra, particularly in these troubled times of pin-sharp regulation and oversight. Effectively, TCF exists to ensure that customers who find themselves in financial difficulty and unable to meet their obligations are given every opportunity to state their case – so that collection activity is tailored to, and informed by, a full understanding of the customer’s circumstances – we think the best way of achieving that aim is through a face to face  interview with the customer in the comfort of their home, conducted by an experienced and knowledgeable counsellor. How TCF is that!

How to know your customer AND prevent fraud!

We note with interest that fraud cost the UK economy £1.374bn in 2010, according to KPMG’s Fraud Barometer. That represented a 16% increase on 2009.

Financial institutions spend an awful lot of money on detecting and resolving fraud, particularly on remote tools designed to identify application fraud trends, but seldom invest as heavily in fraud prevention. In the mortgage arena huge commissions are paid to mortgage introducers, who become the only human face the borrower relates to the transaction, whilst the lender remains in the background. On the basis that “people buy from people”, how much more effective would it be if lenders sent a representative to meet new customers at the outset of the loan agreement, to confirm their understanding of the transaction and resolve any of the borrower’s questions, but also to undertake a rudimentary fraud-check? And here’s an idea – pay for it out of the broker’s fee!

The Power of Innovative Thinking!

Here at Ethicall we pride ourselves on coming up with imaginative solutions. Recently a well known sub-prime motor lender approached us – they’d had enough of the “money or metal” approach, where they were repossessing non-paying customers cars, selling them at auction for a loss, and then facing the thankless task of chasing disgruntled debtors for the shortfall! They wanted to examine a better option – and we suggested that our highly qualified field force could provide it. They began instructing us to interview the debtors, explain the complicated hire purchase agreement to them and the consequences of non-payment, and make long term arrangements designed to keep the car with the customer – and retain the customer’s goodwill!It’s been a roaring success – many of the cases they’ve sent were more than 90 days in arrears, and we’ve achieved an 89% contact rate, and less than 5% of cases have moved on to repossession!

That’s the power of innovative thinking!