Commercial Debt Collection And Recovery In Singapore Explained

The avoidance of a legal obligation to pay for a good or service occurs frequently in the marketplace. If your company has sold goods or provided services but have not been paid, you are not alone.

Unfortunately, in the current global economic climate, this situation of customers not paying up is becoming more and more common.

Many suppliers and finance departments are frustrated by the process of chasing and sending reminders to their customers, especially after the goods or services have been provided and accepted, or after the contracts have been signed.

Some of our clients sent various reminders to the customers, but they either do not answer calls, do not reply, or give an excuse to further delay payment.

Such unpaid invoices can seriously affect your cash flow and business if they are not handled properly.

Debt amounts range from a few thousand dollars to millions of dollars. But the problem is still the same.

It is always best to handle debt collection as soon as possible. Better still, you need to outsource the debt collection to law firms who have experience in collecting debts for their clients.

The longer you wait, the less the chance of repayment, as it gives the debtor:

(a) the opportunity to wind up his company,
(b) the opportunity to leave the country, and/or
(c) the opportunity to transfer his cash and assets outside his company.

So what is the best way to handle debt collection and debt recovery in Singapore?

We would suggest that the best way to recover your debt is to engage a lawyer to issue a Letter of Demand.

There are other options to consider, but engaging a lawyer for debt recovery would be the most effective way. For example, if you are late on your mortgage or credit card payments, the lending bank would engage a lawyer to issue a Letter of Demand to you. The bank would not sit around and wait for you to settle the payment when the payment due date has been long gone. The bank would also not hire third party debt collectors to show up at your home and office to harass you (because that is against the law).

There are reasons for you to take the legal approach — you want to be sure that you are on the right side of the law, and that you can take the matter further to the Singapore courts if the debtor continues to default on its payments to you.

In all debt collection cases, a lawyer should be engaged to issue a letter of demand to recover the amounts owing to you or your company.

Contact us now for a no-obligation discussion or quotation for your debt collection matter.

The longer you wait, the weaker your chances of collecting your debt.