Eos KSI: We send 160,000 letters to debtors every month
Debt collectors are struggling to cope with the volume of
requests from banks, which have risen by 50%.
"The volume of requests coming from banks is 50% higher than last
year. Banks obviously need more personnel in their own debt
recovery departments, and at the same time need to outsource this
activity as much as possible, because they are not coping anymore.
We ourselves are making efforts to preserve our success rate
(actual debt collected out of the overall debt due to be
collected). More phone calls, more SMSes, more letters," says Georg
Kovacs, managing director of Eos KSI, no. 1 on the debt recovery
market, according to data from the Ministry of Finance. The
company's client portfolio includes eight top -ten banks.
The head of Eos KSi says the company sends 160,000 letters a month
whereby it informs debtors on their overdue debt or threatens legal
action.
EOS KSI has 30,000 cases where legal action was brought against
debtors and 8,000 instances of forced execution. The forced
execution procedure for an individual normally takes between 6 and
12 months, and real estate property can be seized even for running
behind on consumer loans or for unpaid telephone bills. "We are
more interested in cash payments, so we prefer to draw 30% of the
debtor's monthly income until the debt is paid."
The success rate for recovering debt on loans up to 90 days overdue
has remained around 70-80%, according to the head of Eos KSI.
However, in the case of loans that are over 90 days overdue, the
success rate has dropped significantly this year, from 30 to
20%.
Kovacs says the time of late payment between the 90 days and the
moment when the forced execution procedure starts (which can vary
greatly from one bank to another, between 95 and 300 days) is a
"dead area".
"It is very difficult to recover the debt during this period. You
either collect the debt before the 90 days, or when the forced
execution procedures start, as the debtors gets scared and do
everything they can to pay."