How to choose a debt collection agency in Colombia: three questions before handing over your receivables.

Every company reaches the same point: a customer who stopped answering, an invoice that has been sitting on the balance sheet for six months, and a manager who decides that collection can no longer stay in the hands of the sales team. Then the question comes up: who do I hand it to?

The problem is not hiring a debt collection agency. The problem is how it gets chosen. Most contracts are signed looking at the commission and the sales pitch, and the three things that really decide how much money comes back, and when, are never asked. At Trébol Jurídico we explain what they are, what happens when they are skipped, and how to verify them before you sign.

How do you choose a debt collection agency?

The best debt collection agency is not the one that promises the most, but the one that lets you see and control your money: the debtor’s payment goes straight to your account, you know how each payment is applied, and you can see the status of every case in real time. Everything else (recovery rates, years of experience, team size) is secondary if those three conditions are not in the contract.

This means that the debtor’s payments always go directly to your account, that payments are applied first to your receivable and not to lawyers’ fees, and that you know in real time whether your receivables are being actively worked, without waiting for a report.

Choosing well does not mean taking the lowest commission. A low commission on money that passes through someone else’s account, is applied in an order you do not know and is reported whenever someone has time, ends up far more expensive than a reasonable commission on money that goes straight to your account.

What happens if you do not ask these questions?

• The first payment goes to the firm’s fees or commission. The debtor pays the first instalment to the agency and your receivable takes second place.
• The money lands in an account that is not yours. Collecting into the agency’s account means losing control: the transfer times and the deductions have no justification.
• Nobody knows where the case stands. Without real-time access, the case can sit idle for months.

What does the law regulate, and what is left to the contract?

In Colombia there is no specific licence or single registry for operating a debt collection agency. That has a practical consequence: almost everything that matters (which account the money goes to, how it is applied and what gets reported to you) is not regulated by any rule. It is regulated by the contract you sign.

What the law does regulate is how collection is carried out and how long you have to do it:

• How the debtor is contacted. Law 2300 of 2023 protects debtors who are consumers (natural persons): they may only be contacted Monday to Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., never on Sundays or public holidays, once a day, through the channels they authorised, and without approaching their personal references. An agency that breaches it also exposes the creditor that hired it. In business-to-business collection the law does not apply directly, but at Trébol Jurídico we apply the same standard.
• How long you have to collect. An accepted electronic invoice is a negotiable instrument (título valor) under Law 1231 of 2008 and Decree 1154 of 2020, and the direct action on the invoice and on the promissory note (pagaré) expires three years from the due date (Article 789 of the Colombian Commercial Code). Every month without effective collection activity is one month less to file suit.
• What happens if the debtor becomes insolvent. If the debtor is admitted to reorganisation under Law 1116 of 2006, as amended by Law 2437 of 2024, individual enforcement actions are suspended and your claim has to be properly recognised and ranked within the proceeding. If your agency has no lawyers, nobody does that for you.

How does Trébol Jurídico’s debt collection service work?

Our debt collection service is designed so that you never lose sight of your money at any point in the process.

• Payments go directly to your account. The debtor pays into your company’s account. We charge no advance, no monthly fee and no sign-up fee: our fees are a commission on what is actually recovered, and we invoice them afterwards.
• Application of payments. Our priority is the payment of the outstanding principal.
• Real-time tracking. In Trébol@net, our software, you see every case 24 hours a day: actions, agreements, payments and stage, without waiting for a report.
• Notice to the debtor within 24 hours of receiving the receivables, with a conciliatory pre-legal approach that protects the commercial relationship with your customer.
• Legal action within the same firm. If the debtor does not respond and you authorise it, we can file suit without the need for a contract with a third party. See our legal collection service.
• Representation in insolvency. If your debtor enters reorganisation, we represent you so that your claim is recognised and paid in full.
• Internal anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing (AML/CTF) screening of every debtor.

The results: 8 out of 10 cases we handle are resolved with a payment agreement, without setting foot in a courtroom. For an auto-parts company with receivables spread across 28 debtors, we recovered 96% before reaching the courts; only one of the 28 cases had to go to enforcement proceedings.