Internal collection efforts plateau at approximately 30-40% recovery for overdue B2B receivables. Professional agencies achieve 50-70% on the same claims. The difference comes down to five structural advantages.
When your AP department calls, the debtor knows you're unlikely to litigate. When a professional collection agency calls, the debtor knows exactly what comes next: court proceedings, enforcement, credit bureau reporting. This credibility gap is the single biggest driver of improved recovery rates.
Each jurisdiction has an optimal collection path. Germany's Mahnverfahren, Belgium's IOS procedure, Switzerland's Betreibungsbegehren — these fast-track mechanisms produce enforceable titles at a fraction of litigation cost. An international collection agency knows which tool to use in each jurisdiction.
A demand letter in the debtor's language, from a local number, citing local law produces 3-5x the response rate of a translated English letter sent from abroad. Professional agencies have native-speaking agents in the debtor's country.
Contingency-based agencies (no cure, no pay) align their incentives with yours. They only earn when you recover. This eliminates the risk of spending money on collection without results — and motivates the agency to pursue every available avenue.
Your credit team's time is better spent on credit risk assessment and customer relationship management than on chasing overdue invoices. Outsourcing collection frees internal resources for higher-value activities while improving recovery rates on the claims themselves.
Our debt recovery agency with over 21 years of experience provides: Business to Business Collections Services, Legal Debt Collections and worldwide Skip Tracing services.
