We can see you!

One of our Solicitor clients regularly acts on behalf of a computer manufacturer, who unfortunately on occasion suffer from attempted fraudulent orders and non payment. Goods are ordered, shipped to a holding address and sold on before payment is made to the manufacturer. The "customer" can then sometimes disappear.

 

On one such instance, involving £400,000 of computers, our client went out to inspect the computers (at 4.30pm), to confirm they had been received and to prompt payment. However the customer refused them access to do an inspection. Smelling a rat, we were asked to provide surveillance operatives almost immediately at the premises and keep an eye on any activity overnight. 

At 6am the goods were being readied for moving and when we advised our client they contacted the MD and told him that, if the goods were moved, a Judge sitting at 10am would not be amused. He capitulated and we collected £250,000 of computers later that day.

 

Out of interest, all was not lost with regard to the remaining £150,000 of computers. We obtained copies of all sales invoices and our client wrote to all of the customers who had not yet paid for their computers and pointed out that under Retention of Title they could only have good title to the equipment if they paid our client. Failure to do so would result in them being liable for conversion. A further £100,000 was recovered as a result.

Industry Topic - 2012 Q4 Insolvency Service Statistics

R3, the trade body for Insolvency Professionals, recently commented on the above statistics. The statistics provide an interesting insight into the current climate and give us much food for thought. There is clearly still some way to go for the economy to instil confidence........

R3 say, "Total individual insolvencies in 2012 are down 8% from 2011 figures, while bankruptcy orders have fallen 24% year on year which is encouraging, however this should not be taken as an indication that people are prosperous and financially secure. There remains a vast majority of individuals who are still struggling with their personal finances. This is evidenced by consumer spending falling as people continue to prioritize paying down their debt."

"Individuals typically petition for bankruptcy because of credit card and bank debt that they cannot repay however in recent times we have seen more manageable repayment plans put in place by lenders. This has allowed indebted individuals to pay off their debts over a longer period of time instead of entering formal insolvency. If lenders were to become more aggressive in their pursuit of debts owed it is likely that we will see more individuals becoming insolvent."  

The full statement can be read here. 

January 2013

Happy New Year to everybody!  

Last year was an unusual and difficult time for our industry and it will be interesting to see how 2013 develops. Without doubt, there are further hard times ahead for some but there does appear to be a small amount of confidence creeping back into the economy. This has to be a good thing for everyone, particularly if we can avoid the triple dip(!) recession, and at London House we are looking forward to a fascinating year ahead.

London House News

After the seasonal break it is now back to "business as usual" at London House. We are continuing to hold a number of follow up interviews from the NEC Franchise Show in October and are pleased to say that discussions are progressing with a number of prospective Franchise Owners. We have set training dates for later this month and more news on this in next month's newsletter.  

Some of you will know that when a new Franchise Owner joins us, the term of the agreement is for 5 years which can then be renewed, by mutual consent, for further 5 year periods. It is with much pleasure then that I can advise that 2 of our Franchise Owners have just renewed their agreements with us. Keith Bell (Glasgow) is one of our longest serving Franchise Owners having completed 10 years with us. Keith has now renewed for a further 5 years. Dave Williams (Central London) has been with us the longest of all our Franchise Owners. Dave has now completed 15 years and has also renewed for another 5 years.  

Many thanks to you both for your continued efforts and support

London House News

We have held a number of follow up interviews from the NEC Franchise Show last month and are pleased to say that discussions are progressing and deposit cheques being received from prospective Franchise Owners. We have set some training dates for later this month.  We have also held our Franchise Owners' Conference at the National Badminton Centre in Milton Keynes. The event gets bigger and better each year and is a great opportunity for our nationwide team to get together and share best practices as well as catch up with friends and colleagues. Our very special thanks go to not only our Franchise Owners but also our guest speakers from Franchise Development Services, UK Global, Chartis, The Federation of Small Businesses and The Martin Cliffe Practice.

London House News

It has been a busy month at London House. Firstly, I am pleased to advise of two new Franchise Owners.

Andrew Beard  joins us from a background as a Senior Insurance and Re-insurance underwriter with considerable international experience. Andrew has taken over the Norwich postcode area from Ted and Linda Witton who have retired. Welcome Andrew. London House Services Norfolk

Also joining us is Graham Stowell who will be covering the Oxford postcode area. Graham is a QA and QC professional with UK and international experience with the Dept. of Health, Glaxo Smith Kline and Siemens. He is also a Director of a currency exchange and trading business. Again, welcome aboard.

London House Services Oxford

As mentioned last month we will be exhibiting at the NEC twice in October. The first event is the National Franchise Exhibition on 5th & 6th (stand number H65) and then we are back at the venue on the 9th and 10th for the Solicitors Group exhibition, LawAutumn NEC (stand number 10). Do please come along and chat to us, we would be delighted to see you.

We have recently attended the annual Credit Services Association conference. The conference had its highest ever attendance and it was great to catch up again with industry peers. A very informative conference from which it became clear that compliance and regulation is becoming ever more prominant in our industry. No bad thing.

Finally, the latest edition of The Score will shortly be arriving at your offices, but is now available on line. I hope you enjoy it.

You Asked Us.......

"What is the strangest job you have ever been asked to do?" 

It has to be the chickens! 

As can probably be imagined we come across all manner of things to be dealt with on a commercial repossession. Normally potential complications are identified on a pre-repossession visit and solutions put in place ready for the day of the repossession. On occasion however, we are not asked to visit the property before the day and we don't know what we will find until we get there. For instance, we were instructed to take possession of a farm that was used for breeding chickens. On arrival the occupier had vacated the property but kindly left behind his stock of several thousand chickens. You have a limited number of options in such an instance but our local Franchise Owner saved the day (and the chickens) by getting them rehomed with another farmer in the region.

London House News

We continue to receive many enquiries from prospective Franchise Owners and we are pleased to advise that two of these now have progressed to the purchase of territories. The new owners are joining us next week for the start of their two week residential training, so more details on this next month when they should be up and running!

At Head Office we are also turning our thoughts to a number of up coming events. We will be exhibiting at the NEC twice in October. The first event is the National Franchise Exhibition on 5th & 6th and then we are back at the venue on the 9th and 10th for the Solicitors Group exhibition, Law Autumn NEC. Again, more details next month but for now if you would like to come along and chat to us at any of these shows then please make a note of the dates.

November will soon be here! That means our annual Franchise Owner conference is rapidly coming around again. We are beginning to put the day together for our team and are looking forward to another great day.

Focus On.......Customer Interviews

There is no doubt that times are still hard for many throughout the country and we are seeing a growing trend by our customers in asking us to visit their debtors on their behalf.

We interview many individuals on a daily basis in an effort to get their up to date financial position and help our clients assessment of each file. Wherever possible we meet the debtor at home and complete a detailed interview form consisting of income/expenditure and assets/liabilities. As you may expect, meeting the subject at home allows us to report details that they may have not told our client, such as vehicles and other assets. We paint a picture to help our clients make cost effective decisions.

It's still home

We were asked by a bank client to visit one of their customers at home and try to interview him to establish his means and ability to repay his debt.

On arriving at the property we found it to be a two storey derelict cottage and completely uninhabitable. It was clear that there were serious structural problems with the building, and the site included a number of portacabins as well as a considerable amount of rubbish.

We spoke to a number of local residents and obtained information which led us to a new address for the subject where we were able to interview him. Clearly his circumstances were not good, and the condition of his property was such that a sale would not be straightforward. However, by being able to get a close understanding of his circumstances (our client was not aware of the property condition) and finding that he was helpful towards our enquiries we were able to go back to our client and help them reach a mutually acceptable agreement. This would not have happened without a visit to the address.

London House News

Our newest Franchise Owner, John Ginivan, has now completed his training and is up and running covering the RM (Romford) postcodes.

His contact details can be found on his web pages:

London House Services (Romford & Thurrock) Ltd

We have also taken two further deposits for new Franchise Owners and they will be joining us for training in July. More details next month.

You Asked Us

"You seem to be taking on a number of new Franchise Owners lately, how big is the London House UK network now?"

We currently have 36 Franchise Owners who between them cover 60 franchised territories or postcode areas. Our office locations stretch from Glasgow in the North to Exeter in the South West.

London House News

We are delighted to advise that, again, we are in the middle of training our newest Franchise Owner. John Ginivan has taken on the Romford area (RM postcodes) and will be trading as a limited company "London House Services (Romford and Thurrock) Ltd".

John has a BSc (Hons) degree and has been a senior manager in investment banking with many years experience with ABN Amro Bank.  Previously he had spells with Goldman Sachs and Commerzbank.  John is experienced with the full product range including risk and reconciliation. Welcome aboard John.

 London House Services (Romford and Thurrock) Ltd 

Further training courses are also booked in the diary for more new Franchise Owners and we will give more information next month. 

Our South East London Franchise Owners, Chris Metalle and Chris Richards, have expanded their rapidly growing business by merging with the asset recovery business, L and E Receivables. The combined operation will continue to offer asset finance companies quality management of their arrears cases with the added benefit of greater geographical coverage and more advanced systems. Alex Barnetson of L and E has joined the board of LTR as the director responsible for arrears management. We send our best wishes for this new and exciting venture which offers finance houses a service in tracing and negotiating with clients in arrears and recovering the assets, particularly vehicles, from anywhere in the UK if required through the London House network. Press release

Finally, our latest edition of "The Score" will shortly be arriving on your desks. It is available now online by clicking on the link in the left hand column. We hope you enjoy it.

Focus On.........Process Serving

As you would expect, we are experienced with High Court, County Court and Magistrates Court and will attend at the address of the subject and personally deliver documents and thereafter swear an appropriate Affidavit of Service. It is our practice to attend at various occasions to effect personal service at no extra charge to our client. We are happy to collect documents from Court or from a client's premises if required.

We have over 40 London House regional offices giving UK-wide coverage. We also operate worldwide through a network of accredited international agents.

Got You!

Recently one of our Franchise Owners attempted to serve a Court Order on a debtor in his local area. He met the subject at the address provided by the client a couple of times but he insisted he was not the man we were after and was 'sick to the back teeth of people calling round looking for this bloke ......'. He was not a happy man.  Local enquiries suggested it was in fact him but he denied his identity again. 

We informed the client and they decided that as there was strong evidence that it was him, our Manager should letterbox the Order. Unsurprisingly he failed to attend the hearing and a Suspended Committal Order was eventually issued and sent to us for serving.  We did a little more digging and discovered a website page for the man and, handily, a photo that showed that the man we'd peviously met was indeed the right person. Further enquiries revealed that the debtor was a political party candidate in the local elections being held this month.  So our Franchise Owner personally served him at the local polling station!  Priceless.

London House News

We are delighted to advise that we are in the middle of training our newest Franchise Owner.
Alistair Howard joins us as the owner of the Liverpool franchise area. 

Alistair is an experienced bank executive at Director level, latterly Director Corporate Banking, Bank of Scotland (part of the Lloyds banking group) in the North West region. His CV includes heading the BoS Real Estate team and all round business banking experience. Alistair is ACIB qualified. I am sure you will all join me in wishing him every success within the London House network.

Further training courses are also booked in the diary for more new Franchise Owners and we will give more information next month.

April of course means that St George's Day is here again and as members of The St George's Day Club, we will be attending the celebrations at The Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane with friends and clients of London House. More detail next month.

Focus On........International work

It has been some time now since we rebranded to "International". This change was to reflect the growing levels of instructions we receive from our clients to undertake work overseas. On a daily basis we are receiving requests to begin work on instructions abroad.
We have a large and reliable network of agents around the world who work to the same high standards as ourselves and always within the relevant laws of the country in which they are operating.
We are able to provide a full range of services overseas including: trace, surveillance, discreet enquiries, asset investigations and process serving

It's not always bad news

A Solicitor client had a case whereby they needed to contact a subject in order to have a letter personally delivered to him. They had an address that they believed to be correct in Canada, but were not receiving any return contact from him when they wrote.
We were asked to trace the subject and, when found, send an agent to hand deliver the Solicitor's correspondence.

Our overseas agents completed the trace enquiries for us and were indeed able to confirm that, according to all records, the subject was living as stated, ie at the address we had been provided. With this information confirmed we then instructed our agents to personally attend at the address and serve the subject with the documents. This was not easy. As we know, Canada is a vast country and the subject happened to live in a remote part of the country in a small fishing village on the North Western shores. We can all picture the typical frozen, remote outback type village that we see on our TV screens.  

Our agent reached the village after an arduous journey and was greeted by the rather sceptical inhabitants of the place who perhaps may not view strangers as visiting for any good reason. We attended at the property and eventually met with our subject where the documents were served on him once he had confirmed his identification. He had been avoiding contact with the solicitors on the basis that they had not advised him of the reason for their interest and feared the worst. In fact, he was to be the recipient of a substantial sum of money.

March 2012

Following the National Debt statistics mentioned last month, March has seen the publication of fraud loss figures. These have fallen to a ten year low on our debit and credit cards but telephone and cheque crime has increased. The figures show that online banking fraud has also fallen but that telephone banking and cheque fraud have risen 32% and 17% respectively.

Whilst people generally seem to be more aware of using anti virus software on their computers, malware and phising attacks have seen an 80% increase since 2010. Most telephone banking fraud losses are down to customers being duped with fake e-mails or cold calling scams encouraging them to divulge their personal information.

London House News

As mentioned last month, we attended The Franchise Show at London's Excel Arena during February. This was our fourth year there, and we felt the best yet. We received a good number of enquiries and in our opinion the quality of the interested parties was very high indeed. We have already held a number of follow up interviews and more are booked in the diary.

Outside of the show, we continue to receive enquiries daily from prospective Franchise Owners and from here we have one applicant booked to join us for training in April. More details on this next month.