Client Newsletter October 2022

To our Autumn client newsletter, and to all new clients that have recently come on board.

With the current economic climate it would be wise to review your ledgers and send over any late payers to us sooner rather than later, the fresher debt the easier in theory it should be to collect.

If you can review any outstanding instructions too, delays in providing us with them has an impact on our liquidation rates for you. If you need help or advice with any of your cases in order to progress matters, please emailclientservices@legalrecoveries.com with the cases in question and ask for advice.

Read on for information on our Tracing and Asset report services along with a recap of our new tracing strategy and information regarding the increase to petition fees for Winding up Petitions from 01/11/22.

Address
For a simple address trace we can undertake our own in house database trace, we call this our first or initial trace, if this is unsuccessful we can refer out to our external trace agents for a secondary trace, this trace has manual intervention and telephone enquiries made to establish the whereabouts of the debtor. Always provide us with your debtors date of birth if you have it, it’s invaluable for the tracing process to establish we have the correct person.

Employment
If you are considering an Attachment of Earnings as an enforcement method, we can undertake an employment trace to establish if the debtor is in full time employment. If they are and are not self -employed or earning under the Protected Earnings Rate (PER) rate this might be a secure method of enforcement.

Mini and Full Asset Trace Reports
These reports are particularly helpful for high debt value cases and also ones where establishing a sole trader’s whereabouts has been proving difficult. The idea is to use these reports at either the pre-legal stage to hopefully save you possible court costs if there is no point in proceeding with litigation or at the post-judgment stage to see if enforcement is going to be worthwhile.

Features

• The reports can be used for all types of debtors including consumers, sole traders and limited companies.
• The reports are bespoke and then manually assessed and processed, pulling data from a variety of sources
  dependant upon the circumstances of the case.
• The reports also research “off target”, which means research not just against the subject name but variants/
  aliases/address etc.
• In some circumstances photographic evidence is also collated such as home addresses, business premises as
  well as the debtor too.

Benefits

• The biggest benefit is the ‘boots on the ground’ service, which you don’t get with a desktop only report.
• The reports can save you money on court action if it is apparent the debtor has no assets.

Mini Asset Trace Report
Report includes:

Full Asset Trace Report
Report includes:

Insight/Insight Plus
Insight and Insight Plus can provide an insight into your debtor’s financial position which can be an invaluable tool to help you decide how to spend your money wisely.

The Insight service provides, if available; CCJ’s number of and whether they are satisfied. Insolvency Information such as IVA’s /Bankruptcy. Employment check indicator & salary information. Total number of credit applications and Land registry information.

The Insight Plus service offers all of the above, and also the residency checker. This double checks the probability of your customer being at the given address.

Just a recap on our new tracing process. We have been reviewing our current take-on processes regarding new debts and believe that we often receive historic address information that does not always assist in the debt recovery process.

With this in mind we are now actively undertaking an initial trace on all new consumer debt referrals – we have had some very positive results so far and believe that this gives us a much better opportunity to recover the debts in the first instance.

If, as a result of our initial in-house trace we confirm that the customer continues to reside at the address you have supplied to us we will not raise a charge for this. If, however, we obtain a new verified address for the customer we will raise a charge in accordance with our pre-agreed trace fees as per your fee scale.

NB. Some of our clients follow a set of pre- agreed rules, this may not include the new tracing strategy, but it can be incorporated if you get in contact with us to discuss.

If you have any questions or queries about this new process then please do not hesitate to contact the Client Services Team @clientservices@legalrecoveries.com.

The Insolvency Service is introducing changes to the deposits paid to initiate creditor bankruptcies and compulsory liquidations. The petition deposit, the amount that needs to be paid up-front to seek an order, will be increasing in all cases where a petition is filed at court on or after 1 November 2022. There will be no change to the adjudicator petition deposit where the individual applies for their own bankruptcy.

Each creditor bankruptcy or liquidation case administered by an Official Receiver is funded – in part – through a deposit paid by the petitioner to initiate the process.

The deposit contributes to the Official Receiver’s administration costs, with the remainder of their costs recovered through fees charged against assets realised during the bankruptcy or liquidation proceedings.

If there are sufficient assets to recover all the fees and costs, then the deposit is returned to the party who initiated the insolvency.

Fees have not changed since April 2016. Insolvency case numbers have fallen to a historically low level, and the majority of the remaining cases have insufficient asset values to recover the administration costs.

The deposit increase will enable the Insolvency Service to continue to administer and investigate insolvencies effectively, maximising outcomes for creditors whilst mitigating the risk of cost recovery being passed on to the taxpayer.

There will be no change to the adjudicator petition deposit where the individual applies for their own bankruptcy.

This change has been implemented through a change in legislation. The Insolvency Proceedings (Fees) (Amendment) Order 2022 was laid in parliament on 5 September 2022.

For further information on these changes please click here

A Winding-up Petition is an alternative to issuing a County Court Claim and can be issued on the basis that a company is insolvent if it is unable to pay their debt as and when they fall due.

A Winding-up Petition is not to be used when a debt is disputed on grounds that appear to the court to be substantial or when the creditor has adequate security for the debt. You will need to issue a claim at court or start some form of alternative dispute resolution in this instance.

Prior to issuing a Winding –up Petition

A Statutory Demand can be served. This will set out the debt owed to you and details of how the payment can be made. The debtor will have 21 days from the date the demand is served to deal with the demand.

Or

We can send a letter giving notice of intention to issue a Winding-up Petition. This letter would give a set number of days, usually three, five or seven for the debtor to make payment failing which a Winding- up Petition will be issued.

The Winding-up Petition Process

Once a Winding-up Petition is issued, it will need to be personally served at the Registered Office of the Company. This often prompts payment as the company only has seven business days to deal with the petition before the creditor is able to advertise in the London Gazette, once advertised, the information will be in the public domain.

Bank

Once the bank is aware that a Winding-up Petition has been issued, it will freeze the company’s bank accounts. This will stop the company being able trade.

Suppliers

Advertising the Winding-up Petition acts to warn other creditors that the company is insolvent and may soon go into Liquidation. Creditors may decide to support the Winding-up Petition and withdraw credit facilities and demand payment up front for further supplies or services. Some could even refuse to do business with the company.

Should payment remain outstanding then a hearing will take place to determine if the company should be wound up. If a Winding up order is made then the company will be investigated by the Official Receiver or Independent Insolvency Practitioner with a view to realising the assets of the company for the benefit of the creditors and ascertaining any misconduct of the directors. Misconduct of the directors can result in personal liability.

Please review your debts and refer them over to us as soon as possible, the fresher the debt, generally the easier it is to collect. If you need any assistance with this please let us know.

If you need a reminder of your log in details or would like some training on the system, please let us know.

If you would like to have a review on Teams or in person, please let us know, this can be helpful to review the overall performance of your cases and is a good opportunity to ask any questions, or iron out any issues. We can also make recommendations for automated authorities to help us to work your files in a speedier way.

Good or bad we want to know! Please contact the client services team if you have any.

Kind regards
Client Services

Legal recoveries & Collections Ltd
www.legalrecoveries.com | E: clientservices@legalrecoveries.com | Tel: 0330024 6343