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If the borrower does not fulfill the obligations assumed and recorded in loan agreement, obligations to pay monthly payments, a financial institution has the right to turn to collectors for help. At Sberbank, problem debts are handled by a special service, “Active Business Collection”.

The editors of the Bankonomics portal have prepared information on how to prevent debt from being handed over to collectors and how to properly interact with this service.

Active Business Collection

The collection service "Active Business Collection" was established by Sberbank and has been operating since the beginning of 2013. Debt obligations are resold to the agency if:

• the client’s overdue debt amounts to up to 300 thousand rubles;
• the borrower does not make monthly payments for more than 3 months;
• the client does not pay fines and penalties for more than 3 months;
• the debtor does not contact the bank employee and does not explain the reason for the late payments.

Repayment of Sberbank debt is carried out in two ways:

1. According to the service agreement. The debt remains on the balance sheet financial organization, and intermediaries help force the client to repay the debt to the bank.
2. Through the complete resale of debt obligations against the assets of the collection service.

The relationship between the bank and the collection agency is regulated in Chapter 24 Civil Code RF.

Working methods

The methods of activity of collectors depend on the amount of debt and the stage of debt collection. Enforcement of debt obligations is divided into several stages:

1. Reminder. SMS notifications are sent and calls are made to the number specified by the borrower when applying for a loan. If the number is not in service, then the collectors call the client’s relatives and work to find out how to contact him.
2. Home visit. If the borrower has not made payment within 30-90 days from the date of the first call, then the collector comes to his home or work in order to conduct a constructive dialogue.
3. Collection through court. The collector prepares a package of documents to transfer the case to court. If the claim is satisfied, the client will be obliged to pay the debt along with fines, penalties and costs.

Usually the case does not go to court; the borrower pays off the debt immediately after calls and visits home.

Based on bill No. 985767-6, which came into force on June 22, 2016, the bank has the right to transfer the case to bailiffs based on a notary’s writ of execution, bypassing the court.

Rights of the collector and debtor

The debt collection process is regulated by the Federal Law “On Collection Activities”. According to it, the claimant has the right:

• make calls to all telephone numbers specified in the borrower's application form (but no later than 22.00 and no earlier than 7.00);
• come home to the address indicated in the application form to conduct an oral conversation (but do not have the right to cross the threshold of the apartment);
• take the case to court;
• send SMS messages, emails and notifications via Russian Post.

Collectors do not have the right:

• call pregnant women, mothers of children under one and a half years old, patients in psychiatric hospitals and disabled people of group 1;
• threaten and resort to physical violence;
• humiliate the client's dignity;
• describe property and damage it;
• call the defaulter’s work and acquaintances who are not related to the loan.

If the collector has exceeded his authority, the debtor must record the offense and present evidence to a law enforcement officer. He will be punished in accordance with the law of the Federal Code of the Russian Federation No. 230.

How to act

If a collector calls, you need to adhere to a certain plan:

1. You should answer the calls yourself. This prevents the collector from calling the client’s relatives and from coming home.
2. You need to communicate politely and competently. Harsh remarks and verbal threats will not be tolerated. They are illegal actions and can be appealed in court.
3. It is recommended to tell the creditor the real reason for non-payment of the debt, and not try to deceive.

When making threats over the phone, you should:

• enable the “Record current conversation” function;
• unobtrusively ask for the name, position and name of the organization in which the collector works;
• write a statement to the police and attach to the statement a recording of the conversation with the claimant.

If it is proven that the collector's actions were unlawful, he will be held accountable for extortion, violation of the integrity of life, threat of murder or causing harm.

If an agency employee makes threats through a personal conversation, then his behavior should be filmed or witnesses (for example, neighbors) should be involved who can help prove the debtor’s case to law enforcement officials.

Conclusion

Sberbank collectors, as befits agency employees large bank, perform their duties correctly. Their activities are regulated federal law N 230-ФЗ. However, violations of the law can also be encountered in a model agency. If the debtor acts correctly in the event of unlawful actions of the collector, the collector may be held liable.

Threats, deception, bombardment with calls - these are the methods of work not only of gray collectors, but also of Sberbank. The bank has its own collection agency, Active Business Collection, and its employees have repeatedly violated the law, as follows from decisions in court cases.

When they called me for the first time, they said that it was a collection service and that there was some woman who owed money. And allegedly she left my phone number,” Stavropol resident Natalya Kamyzina told Life. - I don’t know this woman, and I didn’t take out any loans.

Natalya tried to correctly explain to the collectors that they apparently made a mistake. But it didn't work.

They called several times a week, then they started calling every day, and then they could call ten times a day! They began to threaten. They said, when we come home, we’ll collect the debt. It was very scary. You know, I’m 60 years old, I’m an Honored Midwife of Russia, I work in a maternity hospital in Stavropol. All these calls were very depressing, especially when it was repeated several times a day.

Only contacting the police helped.

They haven’t called us for about six months now, I’m very happy! - she said.

federal Service bailiffs(FSSP), which monitors the collection market, conducted an inspection and filed a lawsuit against Aktivbusinesscollection.

“Despite the fact that [Natalia’s last name is indicated] in telephone conversations she said that she was a third party and expressed disagreement with the interaction, Active Business Collection LLC continued to take actions aimed at returning the overdue debt,” the court decision says.

On December 14, 2017, the Moscow Arbitration Court fined the agency 50 thousand rubles. The company does not admit the guilt of its employees and is trying to challenge the decision in a higher authority.

They collected a debt that did not exist

Sberbank is trying to be cool. The queues have disappeared, there is quite convenient mobile app, the head of the bank, German Gref, at breakfast in Davos, the robot Sofia... But the boorish cashier, who says something from the series: “Where you opened the card, go there,” is indestructible at Sberbank. Perhaps she now works at Active Business Collection.

The FSSP became the supervisory authority in this market from the beginning of 2017 and during this time managed to file seven applications against the agency.

And now the agency is desperately trying to fight them off in court. Fines often exceed the amounts that collectors extorted from debtors. But still, for such an organization this is a small thing (usually 50 thousand rubles). It's not about money, it's about protecting reputation.

The agency managed to repel two statements from the bailiffs (the FSSP Office for the Novosibirsk Region and the Office for the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug were defeated). Five more cases are currently being considered. The agency is likely to lose at least some of it, lawyers say.

For example, the FSSP Office for the Perm Territory defeated Aktivbusinesscollection already in the third instance (on January 26, 2018, the decision was made by the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District). As follows from the case materials, the agency tried to extort six thousand rubles from a resident of Perm (only her last name and initials are indicated in the case, let’s call her Nina).

Collectors sent her a letter saying that Sberbank “contacted Federal service bailiffs for forced collection debt." But, as the court found out, enforcement proceedings was not against Nina, so this letter was a lie and an attempt to intimidate. And in general, she did not owe the bank anything - this was previously recognized by another court.

It's interesting how the agency justified itself. His lawyers pointed out that Aktivbusinesscollection was just an agent of Sberbank. The employees simply called the list (where Nina was) that the bank gave them. Therefore, the agency “did not know and should not have known that Nina had no debt.” The court did not consider such arguments to be justified. The company will have to pay a fine of 50 thousand rubles.

Lawyer Konstantin Trapaidze believes that if the agency goes further through the authorities, it will also lose there.

Even if they challenge the decision, they will likely lose again, he said. - Obviously, the court has already dealt with this matter, and the collection agency itself, obviously, could not provide evidence that its employees acted legally. Here even Sberbank can be held accountable: on what basis did it transfer the materials to the collectors if the person does not owe anything? Obviously there were some bureaucratic inconsistencies, but this does not change the fact that the actions of the collectors were unlawful.

The press service of Sberbank and Aktivbusinesscollection did not respond to Life’s request. At the same time, Life previously reported on the inspections carried out at the agency. Then it turned out that in the Tomsk region the collector was intimidating the debtor, telling him lies and exaggerating the troubles that threatened him.

After this, “Active Business Collection” sent a letter of complaint to Life, which stated that this “information is unreliable.” In December 2017, the Moscow Arbitration Court came to the conclusion that agency employees in the Tomsk region still violated the law and fined him 50 thousand rubles. Active Business Collection is now challenging this decision in the second instance.

Everyone breaks the law

As reported, in 2017, based on statements from the Moscow department of the FSSP alone, the courts considered 100 administrative cases of violations by collection agencies. In 99 cases, decisions were made to impose punishment in the form of administrative fines. In total, violating collectors must pay more than four million rubles.

Experts note that most often the law is violated by collection agencies working with microfinance organizations, and companies of large banks - much less often. However, banking agencies also find themselves in high-profile scandals. For example, in January 2018, an employee of the Perm branch of Pochta Bank became famous.

“I’m stopping you, you understand, you scum? I told you what to do, are you stupid? Shut your mouth,” he said to the girl who came to the bank.

At Russian Standard, the manager also skillfully broke through the bottom: “What do you have there? A mortgage? Russian Standard Bank arranges people’s lives in such a way that it ends with the first delay!”

Usually, collection agencies of large banks work correctly with debtors,” said market expert Elena Dokuchaeva. - At the same time, collectors are people. Even an exemplary agency may employ a person who at some point will lash out at the debtor, answer him rudely, and so on. Unfortunately, no one is immune from this.

In recent years, the economic situation in the country has deteriorated, as a result of which many citizens have lost the ability to service their loans. Many borrowers experience delays, which lead to serious problems with financial institutions. To get their money back, banks often resell the debts of individuals to agencies that specialize in working with insolvent clients. Against this background, many citizens have a completely natural question:?

Can a borrower prevent his debt from being transferred to debt collectors?

Clients of financial institutions must transfer monthly payments to their bank accounts on time. If they do not fulfill their obligations, creditors begin to use various techniques and use instruments of pressure, in particular, attracting third parties to solve the problem.

Advice: insolvent borrowers may prevent the transfer of their debts to collectors if the assignment procedure is not documented and they have not started receiving letters of appropriate content at home.

Debts under which credit programs can be resold to collectors?

In accordance with the regulations Federal legislation Russia, financial institutions can resell debts to collection agencies for the following types credits:

• loans that individuals did not provide collateral (for example, the bank will not be able to resell to collectors);
• consumer credit products;
• loans for which guarantors were not involved (for example, for);
• credit programs With ;
• loans for which the debt exceeded 300,000 rubles.

Advice: financial institutions carrying out commercial activities on the territory of the Russian Federation prefer to issue not too large loans to individuals for a short period. When problems arise, banks try not to spend money on legal costs, which in some cases can significantly exceed the amount overdue, and resell debts to collectors.

How does a borrower know that his debt has been sold to collectors?

As practice shows, in isolated cases banks notify their insolvent borrowers that their debts have been sold to collection agencies. Typically, clients of financial institutions learn about a legal procedure from a notice sent by debt collectors. If individuals receive such letters at their home address, it means that they are being asked to repay their debt.

Advice: Russian banks can turn to collection agencies for help in collecting overdue loans. If they do not want to waste time on the process of negotiations with borrowers, then in this case they resell their debts. If the notice does not provide an explanation regarding the status of the debt, individuals should call the specified number telephone and clarify all questions.

Clients of financial institutions can inquire about the sale of their debt over the telephone. To obtain the necessary information, they should call hotline your financial institution and find out about the amount of the mandatory payment. If the bank employee answers that the account is closed and the client cannot deposit monthly payment, which means his debt was sold. Sometimes the bank notifies problem borrowers that it has transferred rights to their debt to collection agencies. This can be done in several ways:

• via SMS or email;
• by telephone;
• in a written form.

Why do creditors resell customer debts to debt collectors?

Each borrower who decides to take part in lending must carefully study the agreement before putting his signature on it. This document, as a rule, sets out the conditions under which the bank can resell the loan debt. It is worth noting that the client’s consent is not required to formalize the transfer of claim rights. If the loan agreement did not specify the procedure and grounds for resale of the debt, then the bank will not be able to legally transfer the rights to the overdue loan to collectors. If a financial institution violates the norms of Federal legislation, individuals may file a complaint with law enforcement agencies or the prosecutor's office.

If the bank sold the debt to collectors, is it possible not to pay?

Some borrowers think that if their debts were handed over to collectors, then they can forget about them and sleep peacefully. Unfortunately, after documentation transferring rights to debt to individuals will have to conduct almost “combat operations” with employees of collection offices, who will constantly pester with calls, come both home and work, and disturb relatives. If debtors refuse to fulfill their financial obligations, then collectors can claim their money in court. Individuals will receive the same answer to the question: ?

Can Sberbank sell debt to collectors?

Sberbank has been reselling its clients' debts to collection agencies for several years. In April 2013, this financial institution created its own collection office, called “Active Business Collection”. This company actively cooperates not only with Sberbank, it offers specialized services to insurance companies, other banks and microfinance organizations, etc. Thanks to well-trained staff and an individual approach to each specific case, collection agency manages to repay most of the debts. It is worth noting one positive point. Employees of the AktivBusiness Collection company do not go beyond the legal framework in their work.

What to do if the bank sold the debt to collectors?

Federal law allows banks to sell debts to debt collectors. Borrowers usually learn about this from summonses, SMS messages and calls from collection agencies. Upon receiving such a notification, they should not immediately panic. The best solution in this situation would be to contact a highly specialized lawyer who will help solve the problem with minimal financial losses.