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 eithe
