Collection and recovery process glossary

Bailiffs – Bailiffs have the rights to freeze debtor’s assets and accounts. They can also deduct payments from the debtor’s bank accounts to cover their payments owed. The borrower’s assets are those that are not pledged to a specific creditor (e.g. a property pledged under a mortgage agreement) and can be liquidated regardless of whether they were set up as collateral or not.

Court – This is the court in local residency of the borrower. For example, a borrower in Madrid will be filed with the local court where they reside in Madrid. There are some differences in the speed of how quickly loans that have defaulted are handled, depending on the country and constituency.

Debt collection agencies – Debt collection agencies (DCA’s) help us manage debt cases with the main goal of restoring payments. They can be used in parallel with our in-house recovery process where appropriate. In all countries, we automatically file all cases to court after the in-house collection process. For existing cases that are successfully being recovered by DCA’s, there will be no change.

Payment order – This our first interaction with the courts and is a simple, fast and cost-effective process that accounts for the majority of our court cases. If the payment order does not bring any results or if the borrower objects to this, we then file a civil case.

Write-off – Either a partial or full amount of funds are written off when they are deemed unrecoverable. This can be in the case of death, debt restructuring, debt servicing costs or bankruptcy.