Debt recovery: investigation first, collection after

Written by Guillaume Pouillier, CNAPS-licensed private detective, licence no. AGD 095-2024-03-06-20190240581 · Last updated: July 19, 2026

Let us be precise about roles: we are not a collection agency, we do not chase your debtor and collect nothing on your behalf, activities governed by their own regulations. We do what the recovery chain lacks in order to work: find the debtor, establish what he can pay, identify where to seize. Creditors, lawyers, enforcement officers and collection agencies themselves entrust us with that investigative link. This page explains why recoveries fail, which investigations fix them, and at what published prices.

Why do so many recoveries fail?

Three successive walls: the untraceable debtor (no address, no effective procedure), the debtor “insolvent” on paper (no profitable enforcement), and blind enforcement (seizures attempted at random, costly and vain). Each of those walls falls with the right information.

The classic circuit, reminders, formal notice, payment order, enforcement, presupposes a located debtor and identifiable assets. As soon as one is missing, the machine spins in the void: titles never served, default judgments that cannot be enforced, procedure costs added to the loss.

Investigation reverses the order of operations: before committing (or recommitting) costs, the facts are established, where the debtor is, what he owns, what he earns. The decision becomes a calculation rather than a bet: pursue, settle, schedule instalments, or write off in time.

Which investigations make up the toolkit?

Three combinable modules: debtor location (observed actual address, apparent employer), the solvency check (published flat fee, €1,600 excl. VAT max) and the asset investigation (seizable assets, €250 excl. VAT per identified property). Each module has its dedicated page, and its flat fee.

The most requested combination, location plus solvency opinion, answers in a single assignment the two questions that govern everything else: where is he, and is it worth it. Everything the recovery chain does afterwards flows from those two answers.

Corporate creditors: how do you prioritise a portfolio of unpaids?

By sorting through investigation rather than by age: a solvency sweep across the significant files separates recoverable claims (to be pursued fast) from irrecoverable ones (to be provisioned without further costs). The portfolio’s recovery rate changes in nature.

The common reflex, hammering at the largest amounts, ignores the only variable that matters: the debtor’s capacity to pay. A medium claim on a located, solvent debtor beats three large claims on emptied companies.

For finance departments and credit managers we run these sweeps in volume, with a uniform deliverable: one sheet per debtor, a status (recoverable / partial / apparently irrecoverable / suspected organised insolvency), and a recommendation. Your lawyers and enforcement officers then concentrate their acts where they pay.

What can be done about organised insolvency?

Document it: assets transferred to relatives as litigation approached, business continued under another structure, a lifestyle incompatible with the pleaded insolvency. Fraudulently organising one’s insolvency is a criminal offence (art. 314-7 of the French Criminal Code), and the clawback action makes the transfers ineffective.

It is the most infuriating scenario for a creditor, and the most documentable for an investigator: the schemes leave traces (deed dates, publications, unchanged occupancy of the “sold” assets). Our asset investigation rebuilds the chronology that unravels the scheme.

The report then opens two often-combined paths: the clawback action (art. 1341-2 of the Civil Code) to reintegrate the assets, and the criminal complaint that radically changes the organised debtor’s negotiating position.

How does our work fit with your other professionals?

Upstream and in support, never in duplication: the lawyer characterises and pleads, the enforcement officer serves and seizes, the collection agency chases and negotiates, and each works better with our facts. Many of our mandates come, in fact, from those professionals themselves.

With enforcement officers: our locations and inventories direct their acts (personal service, targeted attachment, vehicle seizure at the observed parking place).

With lawyers: our reports ground protective-measures applications and document contested insolvency.

With collection agencies: we handle the “dead” files of their portfolios, vanished debtors, suspected insolvencies, that no reminder can unlock. Respecting each other’s scopes is not a constraint: it is what makes the chain effective. It also protects you, the creditor: every professional in the chain answers for his own acts within his own regulation, and a recovery built on clean foundations resists every challenge the debtor’s counsel will raise on the way.

Amicable or judicial: does the investigation change the strategy?

Radically: an amicable negotiation is conducted quite differently when the debtor’s actual payment capacity is known, and the judicial route is only launched where enforcement will pay. The investigation is not one more step in the chain, it is what lets you choose the right chain.

Faced with a debtor pleading hardship, two symmetrical mistakes lie in wait: accepting a derisory instalment plan from a debtor who is in fact comfortable, or pushing into litigation a genuinely destitute one, costs lost either way. The solvency opinion resolves the asymmetry: you negotiate knowing the other side’s cards.

The same reasoning applies to limitation periods: a claim approaching its term deserves a fast arbitration, which only information allows. Express location, summary opinion, decision, all within days when the deadline presses. That speed, incidentally, is why creditors who wait years before investigating recover so much less: information ages exactly like the claims it serves.

Two typical files, anonymised

A portfolio of thirty-two B2B unpaids sorted in three weeks, a recoverable third identified, proceedings concentrated, unprecedented recovery for the client; a €60,000 claim “dead” for three years, settled after the debtor was located and his flourishing business under a new sign discovered.

The sorted portfolio. A building-trade SME accumulates thirty-two unpaids, hitherto handled by age. The solvency sweep reclassifies everything: eleven recoverable files (active, located debtors), nine partial, twelve apparently irrecoverable. Proceedings concentrate on the first eleven; within eighteen months the SME recovers more than over the previous five years, and stops paying costs on the twelve dead files, which are provisioned once and finally leave the monthly credit meeting.

The resurrected claim. A wholesaler wrote off a €60,000 claim: company liquidated, manager vanished. The investigation finds him running the same business under a sign in his wife’s name, with a lifestyle to match. Confronted with the file, and the prospect of an organised-insolvency complaint, he settles for most of the debt. Three years of “dead loss” closed out by three weeks of investigation, and the wholesaler now runs a solvency sweep on every account past ninety days, having learned the lesson at full price.

How much does it cost?

The toolkit assembles per file: location from €350 (excl. VAT), solvency at the published flat fee (€1,600 excl. VAT max), assets at €250 (excl. VAT) per identified property. Portfolio sweeps get a volume-degressive grid, free written quote on description of the portfolio.

A simple rule of thumb: if your claim exceeds a few thousand euros, the investigation that makes it recoverable costs a fraction of what you would abandon, and a fraction of the procedure costs spent blind.

See the full price list.

Frequently asked questions