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November 2007 VILCOL SPONSOR DEBT PURCHASE YEAR AWARD At the CreditToday awards ceremony in Birmingham on Wednesday 28th November 2007. Steve Rowlands Managing Director of Vilcol will present the award for the first CreditToday - Debt Purchaser of The Year 2007, to one of the following nominees; Arrow Global Limited, Cabot Financial Europe, Lewis Group, Lowell Group and Robinson Way. The winners were selected by an independent panel of judges in October. |
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As the sponsor of the Award it will give Steve even more pleasure, if the winner is one of the three nominees that have used or currently use Vilcol as a debt purchase service agency. November 2007 VILCOL SHORT LISTED FOR DCA OF THE YEAR AWARD 2007 This is the first time that CreditToday has hosted the awards ceremony. Vilcol have been short Listed in the Consumer Debt Collection Agency of the Year Award Under £2 million turnover. There are four categories in total:-
To make this evening more enjoyable, the directors of Vilcol have invited some of their partners, in terms of both customers and suppliers to join them at the awards ceremony and dinner. October 2007 NEW ‘GONE AWAY’ SERVICE FOR DEBT PURCHASE COMPANIES Recently set a challenge by a relatively new debt purchase company, Vilcol were supplied a batch of old T&C cases with no telephone numbers. We used the traditional Credit Referencing Agencies search engines and compared their results with the new Vilcol telephone append service. We increased the number of good telephone numbers that could be supplied to you from 2.5%, which is about average for that type of T&C book, to a staggering figure of 17.4%. A figure of 5% new telephone numbers for example would have been very good on this type of batch. In fact when you add in the ex-directory flags that we can also obtain, the success rate on the batch increases to 34%. In our experience these ex-directory flags are a very good indication of ‘Living as Stated’ at the address supplied. Vilcol went outside the Credit Industry to find new sources of data, for this telephone append service. We hope to be able to offer in the New Year a new different method of cleaning up the poor data, which is typically contained in 80-90% of ‘Gone Away’ debt purchase books. Contact: Alistair Lees on 020 8339 6421 for more information. “In fact the more people that buy Experian and Equifax the better for us” says Del Hudson the trace manager at Vilcol, “without our training and experience….we will always find the debtors they cannot!” In fact our well known manual or desk-top tracers are able to out-perfume most public domain search engines by finding at least 20% more absent debtors. September 2007DEBT PURCHASE – SERVICE AGENCY Vilcol have been working for Debt Purchase Companies as a ‘specialist’ Trace and Collect Agency on a contingency basis for five years now. Strategically this was the right move as other Debt Collection Agencies watch as relationships in the UK Credit Industry change. The relationship now is with the new breed of debt purchasers and away from the Creditor to the Purchaser. Having worked for large Corporate Creditors with high standards of information security and quality control, Vilcol has attracted to its customer base some of this new breed of funding organisations. They do not necessarily have any in-house recoveries infra structure, relying instead on a new panel of external service agents or the Creditor’s previous service agency when the book was purchased. These new funding organisations are getting to the point in the debt cycle, where Gone-Aways and the lack of dial-able telephone numbers are beginning to become an issue. Vilcol is in a good position to help these new organisations as it does not compete in the competitive debt purchase space for new books, like some of the larger DCA debt purchasers. Vilcol operates mostly on a contingency basis, while only buying small second placement debt books at the end of a debt purchaser’s recovery cycle. July 2007NEW OCCUPIER SEARCH Again by going outside the credit industry for clean data, Vilcol has been able to find the names of NEW Occupiers from a ‘Gone Away’ debtor address. We are also able to find out the date they moved in to that address. This is particularly useful to Telephone, Water, Gas and Electricity Utilities who get the most out of this service. This offers significant new billing potential. The results are different in the four Utility segments. This service will reduce the number of inaccurate bills sent to the ‘THE OCCUPIER’ due to a lack of moving information. But it has enabled them to send out bills to 26 – 35% of their bad debt portfolio. In some cases we found there had been multiple new occupiers in a tenanted building. To locate these people requires tracing, a Vilcol speciality to locate the previous ‘New Occupier.’ January 2007 HOUSING ASSOCIATION £25:25% This is a new ‘Trace then Collect’ service aimed specifically at ‘former tenant arrears’ cases. The £25:25% service was launched to new Housing Associations in 2007. The manual trace element cost £25 and the collection element attracts a 25% commission. This not only results in an overall reduction of 28% in your usual costs, but produces a significant leap in recoveries success rate typically adding 1.95% increase per year, which in some cases will represent a doubling in recoveries money collected. This service works so well because you have invested up front, in manually tracing the debtors and we have invested more time in locating them. By definition ‘former tenant’ have left the address you have for them, they nearly all need proper tracing. Vilcol use their experienced desktop collectors for this, rather than using the more affordable electronic public domain search engines. Typically this produces a 30-40% increase in trace success. This then results in a much higher cash recovery rate sometimes as much as 40-50% more or double. During this process we are also able to produce a better write off report for you, which will help you boost your overall recoveries by a further 19-30%. November 2006 INTERNATIONAL INTERNET
RECOVERIES In November 2006 Vilcol signed a UK and European partnership agreement with a US Internet company called ReliaBid Incorporated, Virginia. This means that in January 2007 businesses in the United States of American and Online-Traders selling goods on eBay in America can recover their bad debts from individuals and companies across the internet in the UK territory. In the past some eBay Power-Sellers in the USA were concerned that they may not be able to recover bad debts in the UK. They may even have avoided supplying their products to UK buyers or auction bidders. But with more than 3 million eBay transactions a day in the USA if non payment represents only 5% that means that at least 150,000 debts are incurred each day. The ReliaBid web based solution has two important parts, a deterrent and a recoveries service. The deterrent is in the form of a website pop up SEAL, supplied to the ReliaBid customers, which is designed to appear on the client’s e-business site at the point of sale. Over the last 18 months the ‘ReliaBid SEAL’ has reduced US bogus bidders by 95%. It warns the prospective customer of their financial commitments and the consequences of non payment or of not following through with an internet auction bid for example.
Vilcol is based in S. London and locates absent debtors in the UK and recovers overdue accounts from thousands of individuals and companies each year. The ReliaBid SEAL enables Vilcol under instructions from the ‘Original Seller’ to collect the debt and add ‘Stocking Fees’ and ‘Service Charges’ under the terms of the Point of Sale transaction, if the debt is not paid after 21 days.
In fact all of Vilcol’s services are available to
these international Power-sellers at Vilcol’s normal rates. With
the January 2007 launch of ReliaBid.co.uk, the same
deterrent and recovery service will be available to UK Online-Traders and
Power-sellers across the internet. June 2006 WHAT PRICE PRIVACY? Information Commissioners Office (Data Protection Act 1998) The CSA has sent copies of an important report to its members written by the Information Commissioners Office on ‘The unlawful trade in confidential personal information.’ 5th June 2006. Copies can be downloaded from the ICO website:- http://www.ico.gov.uk/cms/DocumentUploads/What_Price_Privacy.pdf
Vilcol welcomes the report and believes like all responsible third party data controllers, that all personal data should be acquired and handled in a responsible lawful manner. This can only help improve the quality of the data received by third party recovery agents like Vilcol. It will also reinforce the value message that under current legislation locating absent debtors is more expensive than it used to be, unless you use public domain information only. ‘The report comments on the popular trace service’ “……..No-trace no fee arrangements are especially open to abuse” (see page 32) The report should make company executives and recoveries managers review their current suppliers and internal investigations policies. This may even make Trace & Collect debts in future uneconomical to recover because of their relative high cost. May 2006 THE PRIVATE SECURITIES INDUSTRY ACT 2001 By the SIA (Security Industry Agency) 16th May 2006. There has been a delay in the Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) for Private Investigators. See - www.the-SIA.org.uk http://www.the-SIA.org.uk/home/licensing/private_investigation/private_investigation.htm
We would like to keep our clients, valued partners and potential customers up to date with the proposed regulation of private investigators. The 2001 Act implies that any third party who obtains personal information and/or the whereabouts of particular people is Licensable Activity. This may affect third party:- call centre staff, telephone tracers, fielded collectors, means enquires, process serving and skip tracers. Vilcol believes that it is about time this un-regulation area of the credit industry was licenced. We would like our investigation staff to be amongst the first approved. Some organisations that use third party agencies now may find fewer companies in the industry by the end of the year, generally employing less staff and charging higher prices. All licenced activity at some stage will require the staff, managers and directors to be externally trained, licenced and their companies separately annually audited under the SIA approved contractor status scheme. The options for licensing were due for publication by the Home Office in late Spring / early Summer 2006. This may be delayed until early 2007 (CSA June 2006) However, publication is now likely to be delayed and the Home Office is presently unable to confirm a publication date.
18th May – Vilcol attend the SIA Approved Contractor Scheme road show in Manchester. Directors of security firms, Door supervisors, CCTV and parking enforcement companies, shared their good and bad experiences of training and licencing their staff so far. The delegates worked their way through the ACS self assessment work book and notes. Alistair Lees, Vilcol’s Marketing Director was impressed with the scheme and how the SIA are running it so far. The SIA staff helped answer questions on the ‘private investigators’ future approval and gave an insight in to how future licencing will take place. May 2006 INFORMATION SECURITY DEBATE As a member of the CBI, Vilcol were invited to attend the CBI Information Security Debate on Friday 12th May. Where, Vilcol’s Marketing Director Alistair Lees, expressed some of the views he believes may be held by a number of SMEs and medium sized businesses in the Credit industry. They store personal data on a daily basis and use electronic methods, to communicate secure data with their clients, typically banks, credit cards companies and utilities.
Information Security has become a new priority among business and individuals. With the increase in identity theft and fraud. Increasingly valuable data has become linked together in to new databases. Personal Data is more readily available legitimately these days, for example through public domain databases, making them another target for criminals and hackers. Significant financial losses would result from failure to comply with current data security and protection legislation. Our ability as a third party agency to win new business and trade would be drastically affected if we lost our Data Protection, SIA or OFT license. These would have more impact than the current or future effect of hackers, virus writers and spammers, but they will have only a short-term effect, as long as proper disaster recovery and backups are in place! They are always a threat to any business but usually the responsibility of the IT department supported by the board. May 2006 CREDIT AWARDS 2006 & DINNER To out do last years warm up with Tom Tom drums, the organisers had us all waving different length coloured tubes in the air to make music of sorts to start the awards evening. At the ‘debt collector’s ball’ 1500 guests were entertained by the ‘musical’ comedian Jim Tavare and his Bass. While the TV presenter Clive Anderson wittily handed out the 20 awards to the credit industry rising stars. The directors of Vilcol were joined this year by some new faces and some of the more regular guests from among our valued partners. BACK Robin Koolhoven, Alistair Lees & Trevor Forbes (Vilcol) , Julian Watson , Jay Hooke.
FRONT: Simon Corcoran, Lynn Smith, Kevin Edgar , David, Danielle Dubois-Gayere. April 2006 INFO SEC CONFERENCE As someone open to a challenge, Steve Rowlands the Managing Director of Vilcol, agreed to sit on the panel at the INFO SEC Conference held in London and chaired by Dr Jeremy Beale, head of CBI's e-business group. The panel answered questions from the conference floor, looking at the possible harmful effects on online business of legal compliance, particularly in online security of information and data.
After the conference the Chairman Jeremy Beale asked Steve to take part in future debates on this subject, so that a cross section of the companies that make up the CBI can be fairly represented. March 2006 SILENT CALLS Vilcol states it’s policy on ‘debt collection silent calls’ in May 2005 during the amcat roadshow. Seminars held around the UK for call centre managers The subject,Vilcol’s Marketing Director Alistair Lees was asked to speak on was “Responsible Dialler Use.” (See May 2005 below)
Regulator Ofcom announced new rules on silent calls in 2006. The
trade and Industries secretary Alan Johnson said that lenders and collection
agencies will face up to £50,000 fines if people are plagued by silent
calls. February 2006 ADVANCED COLLECTION PAYMENTS Further improving good working practises: The Lender or Creditor benefits from Advanced Collection Payments by being paid quicker and experiencing high returns and better cash flow than from debt purchase alone. ACP saves creditors time and money as it operates like their existing contingency agency model. Each batch only requires maintenance at 4 and 12 months. There is an overall reduced agency management commitment. As Vilcol has to use its best endeavours and work practises to hit the recoveries target to get back the investment made in advanced payments. Early days yet but projections and models produced for a variety of different clients show that cash flow can be increase on ‘forwards sales’ by between 6-11%. January 2006 NEW SECURITIES INDUSTRY AGENCY ‘sia’ Vilcol informs its trace and investigations clients of their ‘sia’ policy in January 2006. The Government agency that has licensed doorstep supervisors and wheel clampers will oversee the licensing of Investigations agency staff. You will need an SIA licence if you are :- “………..engaged in surveillance, inquiries or investigations for the purpose of obtaining information about a person(s) activities or whereabouts, or the circumstances by which property has been lost or damaged, during a telephone call.” See SIA website:- http://www.the-sia.org.uk/home/licensing/private_investigation/licence_who_pi.htm The two obvious exceptions to this are the ‘creditor’ and firms of solicitors. The proposed licensing will also affect repossession operatives, door step collectors and some call centre collection agents. As of January 2005 no Private Investigator can be licensed by the SIA, until the findings of a Regulatory Impact Assessment have been made. Vilcol has registered with the ‘sia’ until such time they are ready to licence our people. ‘sia’ APPROVED CONTRACTOR PROGRAM ACS Vilcol has also made a separate application to become an approved Contractor of the ‘sia’, but the licensing criteria has not been agreed by the Government Agency.
November 2005-11-30 HEARING DOGS FOR DEAF PEOPLE CHARITY Steve Rowlands, the Managing Director of Vilcol, presented a cheque for £750.00 to Sue Pellow, Regional Fundraiser South East of the charity ‘Hearing Dogs for Deaf People.’ www.hearing-dogs.co.uk The picture above shows the presentation made to Sue on Monday 5th December in Vilcol’s offices. Steve said “In line with other companies, this year we are donating money to charity rather than sending Christmas Cards. We thank our clients and staff who support us in this sentiment” Hearing Dogs for Deaf People is a member of both Assistance Dogs International (ADI) and Assistance Dogs (UK).. AD(UK) is the umbrella organisation for the registered charities training dogs for disabled people within the United Kingdom. AD(UK) aims to improve access for people who depend on those dogs in places such as supermarkets, restaurants, on public transport and in other public places. The registered charities that currently form AD (UK) are:
Hearing Dogs for Deaf People
The Grange
Tel: 01844 348 100 (voice & minicom)
E-mail:
info@hearing-dogs.co.uk
August 2005 COLLECTION CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Following the incredible response to our Trace survey we have been similarly surprised at the 73% of clients who answered our question's that they were satisfied with our collection services. This was up against a 38% of clients that responded to our Survey. The written comments that were received were very complimentary and in some cases very useful in improving the overall offering.
June 2005 TRACE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION As part of our continuous learning process at Vilcol we record client feed back. There is a new emphasis on 'customer satisfaction' within our Quality Management Standard ISO9001 accreditation. We are obliged to formally approach our clients for customer service feedback on a six month basis. We started with a customer satisfaction survey in the Trace department in June. The early results show a 98% customer satisfaction. Well done! to all in the Trace Department. But it was the personal comments from these contacts within the organisations that we deal with, that are worthy of a mention here. The two Derek’s at Vilcol, Del Hudson the Trace Manger and Derek Bevan the Customer Care Manager for Trace come out particularly well in the survey. Here is what people said. Del Hudson - CLIENT COMMENTS “Del Hudson who is always able to help.” “Happy with service and with Del Hudson.” “I have not had any severe problems with Vilcol and I find the staff very friendly and helpful throughout telephone calls etc”
Derek Bevan - CLIENT COMMENTS; “My continued thanks.” “Very courteous, professional & quick with response to requests with very good level of contact.” “Vilcol staff are very helpful and carry out any instructions given very quickly and efficiently” The survey will carry over into the Collections side of the business in July. WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK ALL THOSE WHO TOOK PART IN THE SURVEY FOR TAKING THE TIME TO EXPRESS THEIR FEELINGS. June 2005 BREAKING THROUGH BREAST CANCER Vilcol has always been happy to support local organisations and charities. Six local girls asked for our help as they will be walking in the September 2005 ‘Breaking Through Breast Cancer’ sponsored walk. Each participant needs to raise £1,500 to take part.
Anu Massey , Jenn Everett & Zuzana Clark During the ‘CBI – LIONS CHARITY LUNCH’ at Lords cricket ground Vilcol’s Jenn and some of our guests persuaded the ex-Lions Rugby VIPs to sign a Lions (white) rugby shirt, which will now be auctioned to help raise money to help the six walkers to meet their fundraising target. ANY EARLY BIDS PLEASE CONTACT Alistair Lees on 020 8339 6421. May 2005 CBI – LIONS CHARITY LUNCH On the eve of the Lions Rugby team leaving on their 2005 tour of New Zealand, Mike Burton Travel arranged a charity lunch in aid of the Lions Veterans Charity. The event was co-sponsored by Guinness who welcomed all the guests with their complimentary Black Ale. Vilcol sponsored a table of ten guests the proceeds going to the Lions Charity to support past players.
Anu, James, Jenn, Matt, Zuzana and Clive Goodchild There was a large sprinkling of ex-lions players and some of this years tourist at the lunch, which was held at the Lords Cricket ground. A number of speeches were given by Martin Johnson, Gareth Edwards, Bill Beaumont and Dr Syd Millar chairman of the International Rugby Board.
Martin Johnston, Bill Beaumont and Zuzana, Colin & Anu getting autographs
But it was the lunch host Ian Robertson kept the whole thing together splendidly with his jokes and witticisms. Vilcol welcomed to their table: Anu Massey , Clive Goodchild, Zuzana Clark, Matt Waddington, Clive Haddon Cook , accompanied by Jenn Everett, James Gordon Johnson and Alistair Lees.
May 2005 amcat SEMINAR – The Art of making Contact Each year the dialler manufacture Amcat runs a number of seminars and workshops in strategic locations throughout the UK. This year the theme was ‘The Art of Making Contact’ in the Stock Exchange, London & the Lowrie Hotel Manchester. When invited to present one of the workshops by Amcat, Steve Rowlands passed the baton to Alistair Lees his Marketing Director, because he would be away.
amcat Marketing Team on Laurie Hotel Veranda
The subject of the Vilcol workshop was ‘Conducting a Profitable & Responsible Debt Collections call centre. Working with the Data Protection Act and the host of other regulations in our industry was the most interesting area for most delegates. One of the reasons that Amcat invited Vilcol to speak was it’s stance on using its dialler responsibly. “In our call centre telephone numbers are worth their weight in gold” said Steve Rowlands, “it is not our policy to alert alleged debtors with a ‘Silent Calls’ or causing them to feel uneasy or apprehensive about a call, when no one speaks to them, because all of our agents are busy on other outbound predictive calls, so we use power dialling instead.
Steve Smith from Brookmead Consulting
Several different speakers talked about ‘outbound telemarketing trends’ and ‘silent calls’, during the other four sessions spread over three hours. The first speaker Steve Smith (Consultant – Brookmead) Got the sessions going by talking about ‘An industry in Crisis’ quoting from his ‘Brookmead Report’ that was produced for the Direct Marketing Association. Steve Morrell (Principal Analyst - ContactBable) presented a number of national statistics highlighting the role of ‘Self-Service’ in the contact (call centre) jigsaw. Stephen Tourish (Training Manager - Calldirect-Marketing Call Centre) spoke about the benefits of call blending. Rosemary and Jenny (Directors of Opt-4) led a seminar on ‘Permission Marketing and Data Protection.
Dave Fricker the CEO of amcat
The elucidatory master of ceremonies for both days was Dave Fricker (obviously not a Steve or Stephen there were three) the CEO of Amcat Europe, he gave his personbal views and insights into the industry as a responsible supplier of diallers and mentioned the Kitchens Direct/MK Holdings battle with OFCOM a lesson for all responsible call centre managers in the future.
May 2005 CREDIT AWARDS 2005 & DINNER This years Credit Today Awards dinner was a noisy affair. All 2,000 guests were issued with tom-tom drums and by the enthusiastic sound they made all seemed to enjoy the ice breaking introduction. The master of ceremonies this year was the comedian Jimmy Carr who stood for no nonsense after his amusing set, as he presented the twenty awards, seven more than last years epic!!!
Grosvenor House Hotel Ball Room
The event was a success and complemented the high standards the industry has come to expect from the people who bring us Credit Today. There was a lot of animated discussions at the dinner about the demise of Blue Moon Publishing, the organisers, who had held a creditors meeting the previous Friday. We at Vilcol feel that the industry in general would like the Credit Today magazine to continue in the future in some form.
Vilcol welcomed to their table this year: Jay Hooke, Simon Corcoran, Matt Lees, Ian Mackenzie, Richard Antipas, accompanied by Steve Rowlands, Trevor Forbes, James Gordon Johnson and Alistair Lees.
April 2005 DEBT SALE UPDATE Vilcol has successfully worked behind debt sale and debt purchase organisations for a number of years. In line with the growing amount of purchased debt that is available in the UK, Vilcol in 2005 has partnered with a number of institutions to purchase their own debt. However the main difference between us and the rest of the market is that Vilcol would prefer to only purchase debt it has worked previously. “We like to work the debt for several months prior to purchase, to give both the seller and purchaser the best possible price, for a long term equitable relationship.” Said Steve Rowlands MD. “The Bill Bartmann, Commercial Financial Services story, should also be a lesson for all responsible debt purchasers and sellers.” C.F.S. was a USA debt purchaser that went bankrupt, costing investors $1 billion. http://creditcollectionsworld.com
February 2005 SMALL BUSINESS ADVISER TO GOVERNMENT
Selected by the Government from among a large number of directors of British
Small to Medium sized Business. The Man January 2005 LARGER TRACE DEPARTMENT 2005 Vilcol started life as an investigations agency in 1988 and the Tracing Department continues to grow as business develops. We have discovered that the more our clients require debt collection activity the greater is the need for financial information on their debtors. Vilcol in terms of the size of the organisation is in the top fifty of UK debt collection agencies. If you consider that the top twenty DCA’s are owned by financial institutions this puts Vilcol in 27th position in the UK. (Plimsole Publishing Report 2004) Through our membership of the C.B.I. and F.S.B. a number of government departments consider Vilcol to be in the top ten of agencies in terms of new technology, search engines, address cleaning software and electronic trace methods used. These technologies have been added to the wide range of existing trace services like employment and Means reports. All of these disciplines are carried out within UK industry standards, the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
January 2005 CUSTOMER FOCUS IN 2005 There has been a tremendous investment in customer focused activity at Vilcol over the last year. The main objective for Vilcol in 2005 is to supply its Partners up to date and accurate information, in what ever format they require. Vilcol has dedicated customer care staff for both sides of the company. For trace or investigations and legal services we have Derek Bevan, who joined the company 10 years ago as a Tracer and has progressed via supervisory levels to become a Customer Care Manager. On the collections side we have a new member of staff Jennifer Everett. She interfaces with clients and produces activity reports for our commercial and consumer collections, these also include doorstep and legal collections. Over the last six months our customer care approach has more than doubled the amount of clients that instruct us. "The wide range of new customer activity reports seem to answer our client’s queries on their accounts and help them develop new strategies. " Says Derek Bevan.
December 2004 COLLECTIONS CAPACITY INCREASED One of the leading credit industries management information systems CASEFLOW, from Fathom Technologies Ltd, has been introduced into the Collections department at Vilcol. Jim Patterson the Collections Manager says “Caseflow will make it ten times quicker to load new instructions from clients, it displays four times more information on screen and it is five times easier to produce internal and external reports in a variety of formats.” The most obvious benefit to Vilcol and our partners is the extra capacity this affords us from existing staff levels.
New Extension - Collections Call Centre “We were the first debt collection agency to design and build a bespoke Trace and Collections system, back in 1990, which has served us very well. I am very pleased with the increased flexibility the new MIS system from Fathom Technologies gives us. Enabling Vilcol to seamlessly communicate electronically with its clients in their format and produce relevant reports in their own corporate format.” Said Steve Rowlands the Managing Director of Vilcol.
September 2004 TRACE & INVESTIGATIONS CAPACITY INCREASED Vilcol has owned its own premises for a number of years, as a method of underpinning its financial stability and as an investment in the future. This September saw the completion of an extension to the original Victorian Building in a sympathetic style. Not only did the expansion triple the work space, but it also gave existing staff more personal space at their desk as well as a kitchen with breakfast bar, break out room and decked veranda for the MD's parties in the summer!!! As part of these changes the IT equipment has been upgraded. For example flat screens now give more desk space. All correspondence is scanned, so that all the relevant staff have complete access to up to date information at their desks.
New Extension - Trace Call Centre
The newly expanded Trace Call Centre can handle more of everything!!! There has been an increase in the demand for electronic tracing in 2004 .
Vilcol started 18 years ago as an investigation agency. The manual tracing of subjects by our experienced trace staff continues to give Vilcol an edge on our competitors. Tracing is used to improve the accuracy of information used in debt recoveries. This is especially important when Vilcol is benchmarked against other similar debt collection agencies.
The Trace and Collection of Tertiary debt is proving to be the most popular service requested by Vilcol's clients. The Vilcol Trace department makes recovering of older debt or purchased debt much more realistic. July 2004 CANCER RESEARCH Simon Lawrence from Ecclesiastical Insurance, Bristol, raised £2,500 for the Cancer Research Charity, see www.cancerresearchuk.org by cycling from John O’Groats to Lands End. Simon set out on the 13th July and accomplished this feat in ten days. This very traditional and noteworthy journey demands exceptional physical fitness, considerable enthusiasm and extraordinary determination. Vilcol was one of three credit industry companies that sponsored Simon and he kindly presented Vilcol with a commemorative framed picture for our support. In fact Trevor Forbes, the Vilcol New Business Director arranged our sponsorship in May 2004 during dinner at the CreditToday Awards ceremony, at the Grosvenor Hotel in London, when Simon Lawrence joined our table. Ecclesiastical Insurance is one of Vilcol’s newer partner’s.
May 2004 ACHIEVEMENT AWARD 2004 Over the last four years Vilcol has won five business awards, you may have already heard about them on this website? The latest was presented for ‘Services in Debt Collection’ by Today Magazine at the Credit Today Exhibition and Conference, which was held at the Commonwealth Centre in London on the 6th May 2004.
WATCH OUT FOR BOGUS BUSINESS AWARDS Vilcol has started to turn down awards! The bogus kind! that just cost the price of an advisement for example in a periodical or newspaper. In fact a USA organisation called THE WORLD CONFEDERATION OF BUSINESSES in collaboration with the sponsors of THE BIZZ AWARDS 2005 offered Vilcol a potentially prestigious business award. It simply cost the price of a table at their annual dinner in Texas and membership of their business confederation. If you look on the internet for your self you will see a number of international companies have been approached in a similar way. April 2004 CHARITY GOLF DAY Ian St.John, Financial Director of Vilcol and golf enthusiast organised the Vilcol Annual Golf Day at Kingswood Golf Club. The charity event raised £480 And was in aid of www.debra.org.uk. DEBRA was setup to help those people suffering from Epidermolysis Bullosa. EB is the name that was first used in 1886 for a form of hereditary blistering disease and whilst now not technically correct is commonly used to describe a family of genetic disorders that cause blistering and shearing of the skin from even the mildest of friction. A number of Vilcol staff took part in the day’s golf and stayed for the dinner at which, Steve Rowlands the Managing Director, not a golfer of note assisted with the evenings prizes.
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aging
Director of Vilcol, Steve Rowlands was invited to join the government’s S.M.E.
advisory committee, which communicates electronically with businesses on issues
that affect the way we all do business in the UK and Europe. This is not
specifically a Credit Industry forum, but the variety of subjects discussed
at these seminars, breakfast meetings and full blown presentations allows
Steve to put our industries point of view.
