Atradius Credit Collection Services

Various types of agencies offer a number of quite different types of credit collection services. One difference among the various credit collection service agencies is the size of the company. Agencies range from solo operators to global firms like Atradius Collections with offices in multiple countries. In these countries, depending on the location and the market demands, we employ smaller to larger numbers of credit collection specialists. Another important difference between collections agencies is that some have mainly a domestic focus, whereas others, like we do at Atradius Collections, service both domestic and international debts. Additionally, an important distinction to make is the one between the B2B and the B2C markets. Some agencies offer credit collection services focused more on the B2C (business-to-consumer) segment. Others focus more on the B2B (business-to-business) segment. Within these segments, there are further classifications. For example, cross-border B2B credit collection services can be much more complicated in nature and take up much more time than for example a domestic B2B credit collection case where the debtor was willing, but due to payment issues of his own, temporarily unable to pay. At Atradius, we can help you with a wide range of B2B credit collection cases, both domestic and cross-border.

There are many different types of debts. The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of the word debt may just be a debt someone has with a bank, like a personal loan or a mortgage. But a debt can take many forms. One can also have a debt with a family member or a friend. When someone does not pay their rent or their energy bill, that also creates a debt. And when a customer does not pay a business that they took out a service or a product from, that is also considered a debt. It's the latter type of debt that we primarily deal with. Some of these debts result from a one-off invoice, whereas others can be more structural in nature. Long-term customer relationships demand a careful approach. After all, this is a relationship you may not want to retain, and unnecessary demage would carry a high cost for you. In general, by means of our credit collection service offering we collect owed amounts that are overdue (beyond normal payment terms). We can help you with debts of various sizes, but our credit collection services generally involves sums that businesses need to recover to maintain healthy cash flow and/or to optimise their profitability.

There are many different types of agencies. And the services they offer differ in both type and quality of the services that are provided to you as a customer. One way to distinguish high-quality credit collection services from agencies that offer lower quality services is by looking at how long the agency has been around for. Longevity (the number of decades an agency is in business) often indicates reliability. Our more than a century of existence and experience in the area of credit collection services therefore, speaks to our expertise and reliability.

Credit collection services are about collecting money that is listed as yours on your balance sheet but that is not in your bank account yet. At Atradius we can recover overdue funds quickly for you. The faster your money comes in, the better this is for your cash flow. As a credit collection service agency, we have a high recovery rate. Therefore, by choosing Atradius, you make sure the percentage of the outstanding amounts that turns into bad debt also goes down. This helps make sure that your business or the organisation you work for has the funds needed to operate smoothly. We save your team valuable hours and remove the barriers caused by delayed payments. Early intervention by means of timely reminders can help improve early payment rates and increase the overall percentage of customers who pay.

Throughout the years we have helped many clients who have faced payment issues. Sometimes this has been with (fairly) new customers, but we have also helped clients of ours who unexpectedly encountered payment issues in long-standing business to business (B2B) relationships. We understand how much these relationships are worth to you as an entrepreneur. They may be integral to your business, or have been a reliable source of revenue for a long period of time. At Atradius, our approach strikes a balance between a proactive and assertive attitude on the one hand and understanding for real payment challenges that your customer may face on the other. In these kinds of situations, it is important to choose communication over unconditionally escalating matters. By choosing to keep the communication channels with your customer open and keeping in touch on a regular basis, these relationships can often continue after resolution. At Atradius, we can help you strike the right balance that helps you recover revenue while ensuring your customer relationship does not suffer unnecessary damage.

Amicable is a word that means roughly the same thing as friendly. Amicable collection uses cooperative methods (e.g., payment reminders, calls, payment plans) to resolve debts without legal action. For example, sometimes an amount is too large for a debtor to pay at once, but it is feasible for him or her to pay the amount back in monthly installments. Amicable credit collection services focus on resolving arrears through mutual agreement without legal intervention. Legal debt collection, however, is the escalatory step that tends to be taken when time has proven amicable efforts to have failed. Such a procedure includes initiating court proceedings or legal enforcement actions to compel payment. Legal collection involves more formal processes, potentially higher costs, and longer timescales but can deliver results for stubborn overdue accounts.

At Atradius Collections, we offer our credit collection services in many countries around the world. In Western Europe, we have offices in the United Kingdom (with an office in Cardiff) and Ireland (Dublin), Norway, Sweden (Valby), Finland, Denmark (Copenhagen), the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Ommen), Belgium (Namur), Luxembourg, Germany (Cologne), Switzerland, Austria and France (Compiegne), Portugual (Lisbon), Spain (Madrid), Italy (Milan) and Greece. We also offer credit collection service portfolio in eastern Europe: in Poland (Warsaw), Czechia (Prague), Slovakia, Hungary (Budapest), among others. There are parts of Africa, including South Africa, in which we offer our credit collection service portfolio through our European offices (through the U.K. office in the case of South Africa). In the Middle East, we provide our customers with out credit collection services through our Dubai office, among others. In the Asia Pacific region we offer credit collection services in China (both the mainland and in Hong Kong) as well as in Japan, Singapore, Australia (Sydney) and New Zealand. And in the Americas we offer credit collection services in Canada (Mississauga), the United States (Downers Grove), Mexico (Mexico City) and Brazil (Sao Paulo).

The amount of time you spend chasing unpaid invoices can vary widely from organisation to organisation. Some entrepreneurs choose to do this all by themselves. Especially when you are dealing with many customers, each of which make up a small percentage of the total revenue, this can take up a lot of time. For other entrepreneurs with one or two clients, it is often easier. They may not need to use debt collection services, especially when the relationship with their clients is good and their clients tend to pay them on time. Some larger organisations have an in-house team that deals with these kinds of issues. For example, most multinationals have their own in-house accounts receivable teams or contracts with external agencies to manage their credit collection services. In either case, because of the much larger scale of things, these types of teams can go about things much more efficiently.

Documentation is almost always a good thing when taking out credit collection services. After all, the situation could reach a stage where court involvement becomes necessary. And being able to provide written proof or documents that support your version of events can make a significant difference in terms of the legal proceedings, in the unfortunate event were things were to escalate so far. Oftentimes, cases do not make their way to the courts. They are often resolved amicably. But it cannot hurt to be well prepared for the scenario when that is the case. In general, it is always a good idea to keep a copy of contracts. Even when relations with your customers are good, it may be a good thing to be able to look up how exactly you agreed on things when the relationship began. It is also to be recommended to maintain a solid administration regarding the products and services that the clients took out, the invoices that you have sent out and the payments as they have come in. Especially when there are payments that are conducted in cash or by means other than electronic funds transfers (EFTs), then it can be easy to lose track of who paid how much on which dates if you do not keep reliable records of this. It may be a good idea to keep an administration of the delivery of products and services. When for example, you provide services on your customer's property, you may want to take a photo of the work you did. When delivering physical products, you can have the customer sign a document by which they confirm the receipt of the product. These are ways in which you can document that you delivered the product or the service to the customer. You may also want to maintain a database (or to maintain a spreadsheet) containing detailed debtor information. Details such as your client’s company name, address, phone numbers, and email addresses can be invaluable if unexpected issues arise. In any case, documentation helps establish the validity of your claims in terms of how much your client owes you. This helps reduce disputes and tends to make collection efforts easier.