You may recall that last year our Creditor Services team introduced a 3-step debt recovery process that could be of interest to your clients who are owed money by a sole trader or partnership.
Step One
The client supplies details of the debt owed to them, and our Creditor Services team will evaluate the situation and supply an options document regarding the recovery of this debt at no cost.
Step Two
If your client sees bankruptcy as the most appropriate means of recovering the debt, our team will introduce your client to a firm of trusted solicitors whom they work in conjunction with, and the solicitors will issue the petition and seek a bankruptcy order on their behalf, on a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA) basis. This means that your client pays no fees in advance, with costs and disbursements normally recovered from the debtor themselves.
Step Three
If a debtor fails to settle the debt prior to the hearing, a bankruptcy order is made at court and a TiB (Trustee in Bankruptcy) will be appointed to realise the necessary assets in order to make payments to creditors.
Case Study
One of our agricultural clients was owed £28,000. The debt was nearly 6 years old. They had tried to recover this amount, without success. Creditor Services looked at this debt. After some investigation, it was found that one of the business partners owned a property with significant equity.
The next step was to get the lawyers to write a Letter Before Action threatening that we were aware of the asset base and that we would issue Bankruptcy petitions if full payment was not made. Luckily this was not required as the client received three cheques for the full amount.
Result: payment in full!
Our Creditor Services team were able to achieve this great result by using their investigating experience to assess whether there were assets worth chasing. Also, they were able to accurately value the equity due to the surveyor’s report they received on the property and the skillsets within the team when reading land registry results.
For further information and to have a confidential no obligation discussion about the Debt Recovery process please contact david.hush@armstrongwatson.co.uk or call 0113 2211391.
