21 August 2006

Dear Sir/Madam,

Complaints Against Debt Collection Agents
Employed by Authorized Institutions

I write to inform you of the main results of the industry survey on complaints against debt collection agents (DCAs) employed by authorized institutions (AIs) for the second quarter of 2006. Please see Annex for details.

During the reporting period, 44 of the 195 surveyed AIs used the services of DCAs. They together assigned 130,968 accounts to 33 DCAs. The remaining 151 AIs did not employ any DCAs.

Thirteen of these 44 AIs received a total of 35 complaints against 11 DCAs (compared with 41 complaints received by 14 AIs against 14 DCAs in the previous quarter). The incidence of complaints per 1,000 accounts assigned increased slightly to 0.27 from 0.26 in the previous quarter. Three complaints were lodged by unrelated third parties, same as that of the previous quarter. Thirty-one AIs using the service of DCAs did not receive any complaints. No instances of breach of the Code of Banking Practice were reported during the quarter.

I hope you find the above information useful. I look forward to your continuous effort in monitoring the performance of the DCAs engaged by your institution.

Yours faithfully,

Raymond Li
Executive Director (Banking Development)

Encl

c.c. Chairman, HKAB
Chairman, DTCA
Secretary, Code of Banking Practice Committee
SFST (Attn: Mr Clement Chan)

Annex

Survey on DCA complaints received by AIs – Q2/2006　

Table 1: AIs using DCA service

Table 2: Number of DCAs employed by AIs

Table 3: Incidence of DCA complaints

Table 4: Status of complainants