How Collection Agencies Find Debtors: Skip Tracing & Investigation
How Collection Agencies Find Debtors: The Investigative Toolkit
Skip Tracing: The Core Capability
When a debtor moves, changes phone numbers, or stops responding, collection agencies deploy skip tracing — the process of locating individuals or businesses that have become unreachable. The term originates from debtors who "skip town," but modern skip tracing is a sophisticated investigative process that uses multiple data sources to build a current profile of the debtor's location, employment, assets, and contact information.
Professional skip tracing produces results that internal collections teams can't replicate. Agencies have access to specialised databases, public record aggregators, and investigative tools that aren't available to the general public or to most businesses.
The Tools
Public records. Court filings, property records, business registrations, UCC filings, vehicle registrations, and voter registrations. These records are publicly available but scattered across thousands of county, state, and federal databases. Skip tracing software aggregates them into searchable profiles.
Credit bureau data. Agencies with permissible purpose under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) can access credit bureau data showing the debtor's current and previous addresses, employer information, and credit accounts. This data provides the most current location and employment information available.
Utility and phone records. New utility connections, phone number changes, and internet service registrations create data trails that skip tracing databases capture. When a debtor establishes services at a new address, the skip tracing system updates within weeks.
Digital footprint analysis. Social media profiles, professional networking sites, online business listings, and public-facing digital activity. While agencies must comply with privacy laws (including the FDCPA prohibition against misrepresentation), publicly available digital information often reveals the debtor's current location, employer, and business activities.
Business Debtor Investigation
For commercial debtors, skip tracing extends to corporate investigation: identifying the debtor's current business operations, successor entities, affiliated companies, registered agents, officers and directors, and asset holdings. Business debtors that dissolve one entity and continue operating under a new name can often be traced through corporate filings, trade registrations, and industry databases.
Legal Boundaries
All skip tracing must comply with federal and state privacy laws. The FDCPA prohibits collectors from misrepresenting their identity when contacting third parties for location information. The FCRA limits who can access credit bureau data and for what purposes. State-specific laws add additional restrictions on investigative methods.
Collection agencies locate debtors through systematic investigation using tools and databases that most businesses don't have access to. Skip tracing is the capability that makes the rest of the collection process possible — you can't collect from someone you can't find.
