Some of the investigations we undertake are based around solving a single issue or obtaining a single piece of data, in those cases we may be able to achieve the desired results with a single service. This is rarely the case as many of the investigations we conduct cover a variety of issues and as such they require a combination of the services that we offer, tracing and process serving are an incredibly common combination and we frequently find that one proceeds the other. Sometimes we are required to identify an address before we serve paperwork, other times we attempt to serve paperwork and find new tenants at the property so have to revert back to our tracing team to find where the tenants have moved to.
We are aware that when we contact prospective clients some may not be aware of the services we provide or how those services could assist with their case. It is unlikely that every time we call a business owner or employer that they will require or services straight away, however, they may have needed our information previously and will probably need it at some point in the future. This was the case for a financial intermediation company in Birmingham. We had previously completed a number of successful process serves for a solicitors firm and in kind they recommended us to a couple of senior partners within the financial company. For the purpose of this case study, their name has been redacted to comply with GDPR regulations and will be replaced with ABC Financial.
After initially making contact with ABC Financial in October 2018, we were told that they didn’t require our services at present but that they would contact us if that was to change. During this time, we sent them through information regarding our services and kept them up to date with any information we thought would be relevant to them. Shortly into 2019, one of the senior partners called RevealPI and asked if we could arrange a meeting to discuss our services in more detail. Upon speaking with the senior partners, we determined that in order to assist ABC Financial with their case that they would require a combination of services. They had recently invested in debt which required them to send out correspondence to their prospective debtors, however, before sending any documentation out they needed to ensure that the details they had for all individuals were correct, including their home addresses. It is important to note that all of our trace work is GDPR compliant in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018.
The first stage of the ABC Financial investigation required our person tracing service. Although our tracing services can be used for a number of reasons, both personal and business related, debtor tracing is one of our most common reason for our tracing services being used. In regards to debt related matters, we are normally asked to run anywhere from 1 to a handful of traces at a time, however, ABC Financial required 173 traces to be conducted. We were aware the data was fairly old so the first thing we did was run a sample of traces using the relevant information to determine how many of the debtors had moved properties and give us an idea of what success rate we would be able to achieve. Our tracing team usually take around to 5 working days to come back with our results, however, due to time constraint from our client, our trace team completed the all of the samples within 3 working days and achieved a 100% success rate. We discussed this with ABC Financial and preceded with the following 167 traces. Within 14 working days of our trace team beginning their work, they came back to us with 147 positive trace results, an 88% success rate. 20 of the traces we sent off came back unsuccessful, meaning the individuals couldn’t be located to a new address, didn’t currently have an attachment to any address or had left the country some time ago.
Using the results from our trace work, ABC Financial spent the coming weeks attempting to contact the individuals about the changes to their current circumstances. After receiving some responses from their debtors in relation to the deadline, ABC Financial then had to issue legal correspondence to a number of individuals who had failed to respond. We spoke with ABC Financial and discussed the next steps of the investigation, when notifying a party of legal action, they had to ensure that the documents had actually been received, which in turn led us to discussing process serving. When discussing process serving, we made ABC Financial aware that we would include up to 3 visits per address and that our operatives would be equipped with both audio and visual recording equipment to obtain evidence of serves should it be required in addition to our statements of service. ABC Financial sent through all of the relevant paperwork and our Admin team ensured all of the documents were printed, sealed and batched up ready for service. We divided up the 47 addresses into 4 regions across England and 2500 pages and over 1500 miles later, our initial address visits were complete. However, we still had a small number of individuals we weren’t able to serve the documents to, the first time round. After our initial visit we sent them letters of appointment to inform them that we would be visiting for a second time, providing a date and time along with contact details for them to rearrange if it was inconvenient. After conduction our second visits we were still left with a handful of unserved documents but upon completion of our third and final visits, we had successfully served all parties.
All that was left was to complete the 47 outstanding statements of service, which we finalised and sent back to ABC financial within 5 working days. We spoke with two senior partners upon job completion about how they felt the investigation had progressed and they said it was the speed in which we were able to help them with both the person tracing and process serving which really impressed them. As this was the first time they had opened a case of this size they were pessimistic about the turnaround time in which it could be achieved, however using RevealPI, within 2 months they had traced, served and corresponded with all 173 individuals. Happy with our services, ABC Financial contacted us a couple of weeks later with a further 40 individuals which they were looking to trace and start the process again.