Insolvency Regime in Colombia: The Surge in Filings and the Urgent Need to Protect Your Accounts Receivable Under Law 2445 of 2025

For any organization, liquidity represents the vital flow that ensures the continuity and dynamism of its operations. However, today this liquidity faces a growing and often silent threat: the strategic and abusive use of the personal insolvency regime. What was originally conceived under Law 1564 of 2012 as an ethical relief mechanism for good-faith debtors has, under the recent Law 2445 of 2025, turned into an evasion tool that has generated an increase that can only be described as absurd.

The figures are compelling and reflect a red-alert scenario for the business sector. During 2025, insolvency filings increased by 79%, rising from 10,459 cases in 2024 to a historic record of 18,749 filings. Far from stabilizing, the first quarter of 2026 has begun with an even more aggressive upward trend, registering 1,550 new cases in January alone. This surge is not an economic coincidence; it is the result of regulations that have relaxed requirements to the point where declaring insolvency to mislead creditors has become easier than ever.

The structural deficiencies of the new regulation

Law 2445 of 2025 reduced the threshold for cessation of payments from 50% to 30% of total liabilities, allowing debtors who still maintain 70% financial operability to immediately halt any enforcement proceedings against them. Additionally, the law now allows payroll-deducted debts to be excluded from the calculation of that 30%, enabling individuals with stable salaries to declare insolvency based solely on external debts, protecting their current income while suffocating their suppliers.

The real risk to your company is not the proceeding itself, but the maneuvers that take place “behind the scenes” before the filing:

• Asset Dilution: The debtor transfers assets to relatives or third parties months before the hearing, appearing before the conciliator with a “no-asset” liquidation so that the debt turns into a “natural obligation” that cannot be legally enforced.
• Fabricated Claims: Non-existent debts are included with “friendly creditors” or relatives to manipulate voting majorities (over 50% of the liabilities) and impose capital reductions of up to 90% on real creditors with absurd payment terms.
• The “four strikes” trap: A tactic used by debtors to provoke minor collection management errors, causing the creditor’s claim to be pushed down to the sixth legal priority level, where recovery probability is practically zero.
• Express Direct Liquidation: The speed granted by the law for asset delivery actually seeks a rapid “clean-up” of liabilities, reducing the time creditors have to detect fraud and initiate revocatory actions.

Defense Strategy: How to recover your money in the face of bad faith

To prevent your accounts receivable from disappearing into the void of a fictitious liquidation, our technical recommendation at Trébol Jurídico is based on an aggressive defense approach that dismantles the debtor’s strategy from the root:

1. Documentary Audit of Claims: Do not accept any debt as valid without verifiable banking or contractual support. When “ghost creditors” appear, the law allows requesting extrajudicial evidence such as party interrogations and document disclosure to dismantle fictitious majorities.
2. Challenge Judicial Jurisdiction: If the debtor’s liabilities exceed the minimum threshold (set at COP $213,525,000 for 2025), require that objections be referred to a Circuit Civil Judge rather than a Municipal Judge. A deeper and more specialized judicial review is the worst enemy of a debtor attempting to hide fraudulent maneuvers.
3. Aim for Nullity, not Failure: While the failure of negotiations inevitably leads to liquidation (where assets have often “disappeared”), declaring the proceeding null due to bad faith or procedural fraud reactivates ordinary judicial processes. This keeps seizures and precautionary measures in place over the debtor’s real assets, ensuring that the estate remains the general guarantee for creditors.

Insolvency is not a safe-conduct for impunity. Colombian law punishes fraudulent insolvency with prison sentences ranging from 1 to 6 years for those who conceal assets, simulate debts, or provide false information under oath. The omission of assets abroad or the simulation of property separation are actions that immediately trigger the jurisdiction of criminal authorities.

At Trébol Jurídico, our commitment is to ensure that the law serves as a bridge for honest debtors and not as a shield for fraudsters. In an environment where filings break records every month, only technical vigilance and timely judicial action can guarantee that your capital does not become the reward for procedural cunning. Protect your recovery processes and act swiftly; under the current regime, those who do not defend their credit rigorously are condemned to lose it.