Collecting Foreign Receivables

Expanding your business into foreign markets is exciting, gut wrenching, heartbreaking, and exhilarating.  Sometimes all at the same time.

When selling into foreign markets, most Canadian businesses do not ship goods until the purchaser has provided a Letter of Credit. Another option to ensure payment is trade credit insurance. Trade credit insurance pays you for your receivable in the event your foreign customer fails to remit. Some trade credit insurers include:

             AON
 Atradias
EDC
Euler Hermes
 Coface
AIG

At Priority Credit, we work with clients who have foreign receivables not covered by insurance. And we work for the insurance companies themselves.

Recently a client from Montreal retained our services to collect a receivable from a customer based in Portugal. After several attempts through our Portuguese- speaking collectors, it became obvious that the Portuguese debtor was not willing to negotiate in good faith.

Through our active involvement with the International Association of Commercial Collectors (IACC), our firm was able to transfer our client’s receivable to a trusted IACC business partner in Portugal. Our Portuguese agent was able to “bring the fight” to the foreign customers doorstep and successfully negotiated a repayment schedule which recently resulted in the account being paid. 

Our agent wire transferred EURO to our trust account and Priority Credit converted the payment to Canadian dollars and remitted to our client.

If your firm has slow-paying international accounts receivables and you are not sure what to do, we recommend retaining an IACC member agency. IACC member agencies are carefully vetted for their strict compliance to local laws and bonding requirements. In addition to IACC membership, we further recommend retaining an agency that employs IACC Certified Collectors. 

Agency employees that maintain their professional designation are very serious about their careers- and your money.