The payment principle - improving cash flow with effective debt collection

Wherever you trade and whatever the nature of your business, one thing is certain: you’ll want to get paid. Ultimately, it’s cash that enables companies to develop new products, explore new markets and take on high quality staff, as well as providing the funds to grow. And, of course, cash enables you to pay suppliers, ensuring that you not only have continuity of supply but also maintain a good credit rating, which is vitally important - especially when accessing loans and other funding routes.Effective trade debt collection is an essential part of the credit management process, whether this is handled in-house, externally by a global specialist such as Atradius Collections, or through a hybrid solution combining both these resources.Collecting debts – what are the options?Essentially, there are only two key strategies for collecting a debt: the amicable approach or the legal route. Dealing with the legal route first, it is universally recognised that embarking on any approach that involves lawyers and the courts, in any country, is likely to be costly and drawn out.The complexity of the legal approach varies dramatically from country to country, as each has specific regulatory requirements and procedures that have to be followed to the letter. What’s more, as there is no absolute guarantee of success, this approach is generally regarded as a last resort by professional debt collection agencies and most businesses that have explored this option.While Hong Kong’s legislative framework may be regarded as comparatively straightforward and certainly familiar to most Hong Kong businesses, this is not true of many other export destinations. For example, in the USA each state has its own specific laws, while China’s 34 administrative provinces all have their own individual approach to dealing with the legal process.As a consequence, before embarking on any legal path, it is always best to seek advice from professional commercial debt collection agencies, such as Atradius Collections. The benefit of doing so is that we have a global reach and the combined expertise of an integrated team of more than 300 collectors operating in 19 offices worldwide, dealing with more than 120,000 cases each year.Amicable collection solutionsInternational business regulations and financial legislation also influence the procedures that can be used within key markets but, as long as the legislation is not contravened, amicable collection is a much more cost effective route to obtaining payment. While businesses in Hong Kong and other Asian markets have been relatively stableover the past 3 years or so, the global credit crisis has had a severe impact on almost every other market, prompting high levels of insolvency and encouraging businesses to hold on to cash for longer.Whether collecting domestic or international debts, good credit management is absolutely vital to maximise the potential for receiving payment and minimising disruption to your cash flow. Trade debt collection should never be regarded as an isolated process but as an integral part of the credit management chain.Interestingly, the results of our regular survey of worldwide debt collections processes - the Global Collections Review - show that in Hong Kong 40% of companies that use a debt collections agency are focusing only on international collections.Effective trade debt collection is not just about picking up the telephone or sending letters to your customers. It’s about understanding the customer’s local operating conditions, and ensuring that the debt collection procedure itself is planned and sustained. Knowledge of the customer’s market, payment history and the current state of its business can all be influencing factors on the best approach to achieve success.Within Atradius, we have up-to-date information on 100 million companies worldwide, enabling our collections processes to be highly robust - and to deliver results. To help companies in Hong Kong and around the world, we regularly publish an updated guide called the ‘Atradius Collections International Debt Collections Handbook’, a free publication that explains the amicable and legal routes available in each of 32 countries.Only with local expertise can businesses ensure they are following a professional and successful approach, which is where the International Debt Collections Handbook/ Atradius Collections can really help. So, if you’re putting tremendous effort into developing your business, look at the effectiveness of your collections procedures to ensure your effort is rewarded and that your debts get paid.Atradius Collections and Atradius Credit Insurance can be contacted at:General Line: +852 3657 0700 Email: hkenquiry@atradius.com www.atradius.com.hk