Losing contact with an overdue debtor is a common problem in business. People often change address without notice. Sometimes it is done with the intent to avoid being pursued to pay debts – in other cases is the simple oversight such as forgetting to advise everyone of change of address.
‘Skip Tracing’ is a profession that locates people who have changed address when another party, often a creditor, wishes to make contact with them for debt collection.
Why use a Skip Tracing professional?
You can try to trace a person who has skipped, but it often wastes a lot of time and leads to a dead end. If a debtor is intentionally trying to hide to avoid debt collection, then a Skip Tracing professional has a much greater chance of finding them than an amateur has.
In almost all cases, Skip Trace professionals have proven know-how and effective techniques that save a lot of time and effort and achieve much higher success rates of tracing skipped debtors therefore improved debt collection.
How can you help to find missing debtors?
The most effective action you can take to increase the chances of finding the person is to give the Skip Trace professional extra information. Often a company will share the missing debtor’s name and previous address information with the Skip Trace professional, but the company will know much more information they haven’t shared. And the extra information can dramatically increase the speed and success of the trace. Typical information that businesses often know, and that helps find the debtor includes:
• Current or previous phone numbers
• Previous addresses
• Family or next of kin contact details
• Occupation, and current or previous employer details
• Date of birth or approximate age
How do you find a Skip Trace professional?
Most major Debt Collection Agencies have a professional Skip Tracing service, and a few agencies have a reputation for being able to find the hardest to locate debtors. A leader in the Skip Tracing field in Australia is Sydney-based Outstanding Collections (Aust) Pty Ltd. You can contact Outstanding Collections on 02 9545 3115.
Searching for a debtor or person to assign
With more than 63,000 bankruptcies in the country, there has been a sharp rise in job cuts due to unpaid bills. At the heart of this problem, there is very often the disappearance of customers, which hinders the recovery of trade receivables and jeopardizes the financial strength of companies already weakened by the economic situation.
Bailiffs, lawyers, companies or individuals sometimes encounter great difficulties in their search for debtors. They have to deal with opposing parties who hide their real address. The Detectives Group is committed to helping you locate your debtors.
The first step in collecting debts is to search for debtors
In the face of debt collection problems, many individuals or businesses prefer to flee and disappear without leaving any address. Whether tenants evaporated in the wild or companies no longer paying their credits, finding debtors is a complicated task, sometimes complex. Indeed, some do not hesitate to transmit deliberately erroneous or obsolete information to scramble the tracks and make the diversion.
Finding the real address of the debtor is the initial condition for recovering his debts. Indeed, in order to initiate a procedure for debt recovery, it is essential to give notice to the debtor by means of a registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt or through a bailiff. But in this case, the bailiff will encounter the same problem of location of the debtor.
In case of a lawsuit, the same problem arises, because it will have to serve your assignment to the opposing party by the bailiff, who will again need the real address of your opponent.
These investigations will allow you to obtain better visibility on the economic situation of your debtor. The objective is to verify its financial capacity to honor its debt. In addition, this solvency survey can also be conducted, upstream, with future business partners, to protect you from possible unpaid.
Performing a debtor search
For a natural person, Detectives will need at least the marital status of your opponent (name, first names, date, and place of birth), to avoid confusing it with a namesake. The more information you have relevant to the survey (employer, family address, ex-addresses …), the faster and more effective investigations will be.
Be aware that all these investigations comply with the regulations of private investigators. The customers of Detectives benefit from the greatest confidentiality since all the private detectives working for the group are subject to the professional secrecy.
