Maintaining customer relations is essential for any company. That’s why ARC’s lawyers, experienced in negotiation techniques, give priority to amicable collection actions, enabling you to optimize your debt recovery and maintain balanced commercial relations with your customers. Find out what Sophie Milliot, Administrative and Financial Director of IMS Health France, has to say on the subject.
Our legal experts will initiate an amicable approach as soon as they receive your file, in addition to any actions taken internally. If necessary, we carry out an in-depth credit check on your debtor to determine the most appropriate strategy for collecting your debt.
At Cabinet ARC, you have a single point of contact throughout the entire collection process. It ensures the impact of reminders of unpaid invoices to your customers, while modifying the sequence, content and support of interventions at each stage.
ARC’s legal experts focus on “customized collection”, taking into account the specific features of your business sector. We systematically adapt our approach to the specific collection case.
Our business lawyers are well versed in negotiation techniques. They develop and implement tailor-made debt collection solutions to get cash back into your treasury quickly, right from the out-of-court phase.
If the amicable collection procedure fails, our teams can quickly suggest the best course of action: to stop all action or to launch legal collection proceedings.
If the amicable collection phase fails, it may be appropriate to initiate the judicial collection phase, i.e. legal proceedings against your debtor.
Judicial collection, also known as “contentious” collection, consists of bringing an action before the competent court to obtain a judgment against the defaulting debtor when all amicable reminders and negotiation attempts have failed.
ARC’s legal experts will be with you every step of the way during this technical, highly supervised phase.
There are several legal collection procedures for unpaid debts, including summary proceedings and proceedings on the merits.
To optimize judicial debt recovery, ARC has also developed innovative techniques that combine the work of its Business Detective Department with specific legal action:
the procedure for the seizure of receivables, which makes your debtor’s seizable assets unavailable before legal proceedings have been taken against him.
Summons to the merits
The summons on the merits is a judicial procedure in which the judge will rule on the merits of the case and on all aspects of the proceedings. This procedure is initiated when there is a serious dispute over the amount of the debt to be recovered.
Once your debtor has been sentenced by the court, ARC’s legal experts take action to enforce the judgment as quickly as possible through our network of competent bailiffs.
Quick assignment
As for summary proceedings, they can be instituted as soon as no serious dispute has been raised. This procedure enables you to quickly obtain a conviction against your debtor.
Each of these legal collection procedures must comply with specific rules. Our debt collection lawyers will help you implement the strategy best suited to your situation, and provide you with personal, transparent support throughout the legal process.
To optimize judicial debt collection, ARC has also developed innovative techniques that combine the work of its Business Detective Department with specific legal action. the precautionary seizure procedure which makes your debtor’s seizable assets unavailable before legal proceedings have been taken against him or her.
Our business detective department first identifies assets that can be seized at various levels, such as company bis bank accounts, VAT credit, research tax credit, factor’s guarantee deposit or even receivables held by your debtor from his own customers.
The seizure procedure begins with the filing of a petition with the competent magistrate. Once authorization for seizure has been obtained, our competent bailiffs take charge of immobilizing the funds intended for the debtor.
By making assets unavailable upstream, we discourage the debtor from initiating lengthy and costly legal proceedings in order to dissuade the creditor.
ARC’s expertise in international debt collection is based on the constant adaptability of our lawyers to the commercial and legal specificities of each country.
For over 20 years, ARC has built up a comprehensive network of high-performance partners throughout the world, selected according to strict criteria.
Our teams’ perfect knowledge of local languages, laws and customs enables them to determine the most appropriate procedure for optimizing the collection of your international receivables.
Unpaid debts can take on different meanings depending on the country of origin of your debtor.
While in German-speaking countries and Japan, a receivable will quickly reveal a solvency problem due to the fact that payment of sums owed is a question of respecting the rules of honor, in countries such as Brazil, India and China, it may, on the contrary, be indicative of a performance dispute.
The weight of local traditions can add to the administrative and legal burden of international debt collection. You’ll need to understand and adapt to these traditions to avoid antagonizing your business partner, and to preserve good business relations.
The support of ARC’s local partners is essential to maximize the chances of a favorable outcome and the return of cash to your company.
