Video: Collection protocols at Marketlend

Listen to the CEO and founder of Marketlend, Leo Tyndall, explain Marketlend’s collection protocols and emphasize the importance of communication. If you want to read the full transcript, please see below.

Marketlend has discovered over time that – and it sounds strange – but time is your enemy when it comes to collections. The longer it takes for you to collect, the higher risk you have that there’s no assets left. So as a result of that, what we typically do in collections is this: If someone fails to pay, we actually have an alert system. We have three alert systems. We have an alert systems where we tell the client before it’s due to pay. We send them an SMS, we send them an email. If it doesn’t pay, they also get another alert, an SMS. On top of that, we will have one of our representatives call them and say, “Hey look what’s going on”, and understand it. That’s on the first occasion. If the representative can’t get through to them, we then have a second representative call them. So we have two of them chase them up.

Then after that, that’s within the one day. When it comes to the second or third day, we will try to rerun the direct debit, ‘cause everything is paid through direct debit. And if that direct debit fails on the second occasion, then it moves to what we would say a more severe collection event. They are then put on what we call an alert system, which sends them out a message saying, “You’re on second direct debit. You do realize that you’re trading in solvent.” And then what we will do is within the next few days we will try to resolve it. If we still can’t get in touch with them, we forward it across to a collection agency, which is a subsidiary of QBE, and they will then take over the collections process.

If we think it’s futile even sending it to them, we will then do a thing like issue a statement of claim or a statutory demand which takes legal proceedings. And we move very quickly. We’ll have that done within 30 days. Depending on the amount, we’ll also investigate whether it’s worthwhile for us to actually send one of our representatives up there. Or if it’s a lower amount, we will send, we have an agency that sends a, what we call a field agent, and that field agent would go out there and do a report and tell us what’s going on. So what we do is- so that’s in the event that they’re not communicating. If they’re communicating, we will then see where they’re at. And if they make a promise, we will follow that promise. If they keep to their promises, great, they’re back on track. If they don’t keep to their promises, well then we escalate it further. And we engage our legal department and also an external lawyer.