Inappropriate collection processes: Solicitors not acting on bank instructions
Mel Loades
MD of NonExecChair Ltd & BBF Consulting Ltd t/a Personal Guarantee; Non-Exec Chair of Chilfen Group
Despite some shocking stories in the news for the most part banks, solicitors and debt collection agencies play reasonably fair; this is the first of 3 examples where we were able to identify and rectify a particular organisational issue.
In the early 2010’s a reasonably small London based solicitor firm acting for a bank seemed to be much too quick to reject offers and much too keen to issue proceedings with respect to personal guarantee matters, even issuing some in the high court when it was clearly a matter for a lower court.
It was suspected that the firm were not informing banks of offers being made and rejecting them out of hand in addition to racking up costs on cases to the detriment of their client the bank.
Thankfully we were able to identify this anomaly only after four cases and in three of those cases our clients reported the matter themselves to the bank who confirmed that they were unaware of those offers and accepted all three of them. We ceased to see any more cases being put to this firm of solicitors by the bank.
We have had one other instance of this with another firm of solicitors but having dealt with some 2,000 personal guarantee cases, it really not common and far from being an industry wide problem.