Debt Collection Defined

Apart from a director or officer of a corporation or a member of a partnership acting on behalf of that corporation or partnership, the Legal Practitioners Act [Chapter 27:07] prohibits persons other than registered legal practitioners from suing or threatening to sue on behalf of other persons. Non- legal practitioners cannot commence any action or suit in any court on behalf of others. The Act does not however prohibit non-legal practitioners from collecting debts per se on behalf of other persons for as long as such collection does not extend to the issuing of process or of any threats of such action against a debtor. There is no statute which regulates the operations of such debt collectors and thus there is no statutory body or authority that monitors their activities.

Debt collection by persons who are not legal practitioners can be viewed as an informal debt recovery procedure which does not involve the issuing of court process. Some call it the pre-action or informal collection stage. It is the work of an agent acting on behalf of the creditor. The agent uses informal techniques that are designed to enquire into the creditworthiness of the debtor and to persuade him or her to pay and avoid being taken to court. These informal techniques help the creditor to assess the potential of the debtor to pay the debt and once this is ascertained the creditor informally demands payment and if this...