Results of enforcing receivables in the czech republic

Two principle methods can be distinguish in the case of enforcing receivables in developed countries. The first is individual enforcement. On one side there is a single creditor and on the other side there is a creditor's debtor. The second is collective enforcement. It is a process where more creditors of one debtor are connected together. Possible and permitted means of both kinds of enforcement are defined by the state power. The collective enforcement is connected with the insolvency proceedings. This process is very transparent in the Czech Republic because all decisions and documents are included in the insolvency register. The insolvency register is available online for free. Although results of enforcement are not generalized by Czech statistical office it is possible to count them for individual cases. The individual enforcement is less transparent. It starts with activities as phone calls, letters, personal visits. When these activities are not successful it goes on with sale of problematic receivables or court process finishing by a forfeiture title. After acquiring the forfeiture title which confirms that the receivable exists an individual distrainer office acts on behalf of the creditor. The cooperation with distrainer offices in comparison with insolvency administrators is less transparent because there is no publicly accessible register. It is not possible to compare individual cases or results of individual distrainer offices. This paper is focused on the comparison of recovery rates in the case of individual and collective enforcement. The comparison is based on own researches whose most difficult part is data collecting. The data collecting is especially difficult in the case of individual enforcement. Most distrainer offices do not want to cooperate although all distrainer officers are appointed in the function by state authorities and their activities should be heavily regulated. It depends on individual will and cooperation. The results of collective enforcement are collected in the insolvency register but their extraction is not automatically possible. Therefore they have to be obtained case by case. Technically it means that each individual case has to be opened, final allocation resolution found and recovery rate of receivables extracted in the constructed database.