Has your debtor fled? Try skip tracing

It is 6 pm on Friday and Washington has gathered his friends and relatives at a city hotel for a small fundraiser in support of his ailing mother who has been diagnosed with cancer.

Since her diagnosis two months before, Washington has depleted his savings trying to secure treatment for her yet the cost keeps rising with no signs of relief in sight. 

This is the second round of fundraising yet the deficit is estimated to be around Sh2.2 million.

During the first round, they managed to raise Sh300,000 slashing the cost to Sh2.5 million.

While he was doing this at the hotel, he spotted his debtor!

The debtor also spotted him and felt uneasy, prompting him to walk out.

Washington remembers how a year before, he had sold the man a new car on condition that he would clear the debt in two installments.

After the first installment, the debtor’s phone went off, he moved out of his house and took-off with the Sh400,000 balance.

Just like Washington, there are many individuals and businesses that have lost assets due to bad debts that result are caused by defaulters.

Many of these debtors often go offline, switch off their phones and vacate to unknown locations in a bid to evade the creditors hunting them.

Eventually, creditors give up the chase and write off these debts.

This often happens because creditors cannot engage a debt collection agency.

Whilst it may look as though the debtor is dead, imprisoned or even kidnapped; in contrast, many of them are still alive, in good financial health and are infact walking around scot-free.

What would the best course of action other than forfeiting the debt in the case where a debtor goes missing?

It’s quite simple; go for skip tracing rather than debt collection services.

Skip tracing refers to a process of trying to locate a person who has gone missing and cannot be contacted in any way.

Usually these services are offered by the same debt collection agencies and sometimes on a “ No trace no commission” basis.

This is because if you go for debt collection services, the result will be that the debtor cannot be contacted and the case would be referred back to you as uncollectible.

With the advent of internet social networking sites such as facebook and twitter, you can also try to conduct a skip trace on your own by checking whether the debtor is registered and and belongs to an online group.

If yes, then you can opt to build a relationship with one of his friends and create a rapport.

As you move on, you can then conduct your search on the location of the debtor, his contacts and place of work.

These you can then pass on to a debt collection agency for action.

If the internet option proves fruitless, then you can consider hiring the services of a skip tracing firm.

Locally, there are only a few debt collection firms that offer skip tracing and one of these is Metropol East Africa Ltd which also offers collection services for both local and international debts.

Coupled with skip tracing services, the firm can also go ahead to conduct asset tracing to ascertain whether the debtor has assets that can be attached to recover outstanding debts.

For instance in the case of Washington, a skip tracing firm would first locate where the debtor’s residence, his current contact address and the his attachable assets .

Upon locating the debtor and his assets, the tracing firm would then recommend the best course of action; whether to hire a debt collector or to take a legal action against the debtor through a court injunction.

In addition, it would not be advisable to contact the debtor directly upon successful skip tracing since he would downplay the situation and make a promise of repayment as he looks for another escape route.

Again, seek the service of a debt collection agency to recover the debt before you can resort to litigation since not all people who cannot be located are necessarily hiding from something.