Debtor Tracing & Customer Finding Services

Tracing agents are specialists who are charged with finding missing people. These ‘lost’ people may be family members and friends who have disconnected with loved ones, those who need to be reunited with their assets (such as pension funds, lottery prizes or legacies left to them in a will), and debtors who have arrears or outstanding loans to pay off. People can lose touch with individuals and organisations for a variety of reasons, for example, they might have moved to a new house or changed their telephone number without letting people know.  This might be deliberate, in the case of people do night wish to be found. In other cases, this can be an oversight, for example, where a person has forgotten they had a savings account or pension pot or were unaware they had been left assets in a will.

There are various ways to trace an individual and the most reliable method is to use a tracing agency, or an organisation with debt tracing solution tools and expertise. Both of these methods use a wide range of information from different sources, which can include: the last known address of an individual and their telephone number, date of birth details, mortality data and public sector information.

The methods used to trace debtors must comply with the law, including the Data Protection Act.

The most effective way to trace and find a debtor in the UK is to use the services of a tracing agency. They have the expertise, technology and data to do this more efficiently, quickly and more successfully than a non-specialist. If you are trying to find a debtor in order to collect arrears or outstanding payments, it can be challenging because often they don’t want to be found. This means they can go to great lengths to avoid being located, such as using other names. Any tracing agent or organisation used by a creditor must therefore be reliable, so they can be confident that the person who has been found is the right person.

You will need to provide the tracing agent or agency with as much information as possible to help them locate the debtor as quickly and as easily as they can. This might include full names, addresses, dates of birth, last known and other addresses, email addresses, work address, landline and telephone numbers and website addresses. Debtors can be tracked down by cross referencing different sources of information. For example, some debt tracers use a credit reference agency because a link might be established when a debtor applies for credit with a new address, or when they inform their bank or credit card provider that they have moved to a new house.

The new contact details then need to be confirmed as correct by validating them against another data source before your organisation can begin to collect the debt owed by the traced person.