25 February 2008

Dear Sir/Madam,

Complaints Against Debt Collection Agents Employed by Authorized Institutions

I write to inform you of the results of the industry survey on complaints against debt collection agents (DCAs) employed by authorized institutions (AIs) for the fourth quarter of 2007.  Please see the Annex for details. 

During the reporting period, 39 AIs used the services of DCAs.  They together assigned 73,087 accounts to 23 DCAs.

A total of 21 complaints against 11 DCAs were received by 11 AIs (compared with 25 complaints against 10 DCAs received by 12 AIs in the previous quarter).  The incidence of complaints per 1,000 accounts assigned was 0.29 compared with 0.31 in the previous quarter.  As in the previous quarter, no complaints were lodged by unrelated third parties.

One instance of a breach of the Code of Banking Practice was reported during the quarter compared to nil in the previous quarter. In this case, the debt collector misled the complainant to believe that he was a staff member of the lending AI, and allegedly disclosed the loan details of the debtor to his colleagues (although this could not be confirmed because of a malfunction in the telephone recording system of the DCA on the day in question).  The AI issued a warning letter to the DCA in light of the incident. It also required the DCA to develop a proper business continuity plan to ensure that its telephone recording system works at all times.

Yours faithfully,

Karen Kemp
Executive Director (Banking Policy)

Annex

Survey on DCA complaints received by AIs - Q4/2007

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