Lending over messaging: repayment reminders that do not harass

A repayment reminder before the date is a service. Messaging after it is collections, which is regulated almost everywhere - and messaging somebody's contacts about their debt is the practice regulators have moved hardest against.

Before the date: genuinely useful

A reminder two or three days before a payment is due reduces late payment more than anything that happens afterwards. It should carry the amount, the date, and the way to pay - and nothing else.

Hi Grace - your repayment of 4,500 is due Friday
15 September.

Pay to Paybill 123456, account 88214.

If Friday is difficult, reply and we'll work something
out.

The last line is the important one. It converts a silent default into a conversation, and a borrower who tells you early is worth far more than one who stops answering.

After the date: the rules tighten

• Frequency limits apply. Whatever your regulator says about calls generally applies to messages, and a message is cheaper to send, which is exactly why the limits exist.
• Never contact third parties about the debt. Family, employers, referees. This is the single clearest line.
• No threats, no implied consequences you cannot carry out. Written down, in a chat, it is evidence.
• Stop when asked, in the way your rules require. And record it.

When somebody says they cannot pay

This is a hardship disclosure, often with personal detail attached - illness, a lost job, a bereavement. Two things follow:

1. Have an actual arrangement to offer. A restructure, a payment holiday, a smaller instalment. An agent with nothing to offer will either improvise or press.
2. Record the arrangement, not the story. That a hardship arrangement was agreed belongs in the record; the medical detail does not need to be copied into five fields - see sensitive conversations.

Keep the whole conversation

Collections is the area most likely to produce a complaint to a regulator, and the complaint will be about what was said. A complete, retained conversation from a business number is your defence; messages sent from an officer's personal phone are not.