In this week’s article on Operational Insights, we will be sharing the 4 functional departments that make up KX-Unit. The 4 departments are: Sales Department, Administrative Department, Operations Department, and Marketing and Communication Department. All of the departments play a critical role in KX-Unit’s day-to-day function and they are therefore highly synergized to support, compliment, supplement each other in the various cases entrusted to KX-Unit.

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The Sales Department is often where the workflow begins. New cases are sought after, addressed, finalized, and thoroughly handed over to the Administrative Department for processing. Customer enquiries are answered as we provide the initial consultancy with our prospective clients; to address some of their pressing concerns, understand from them the origin of the debt, and the story of the debt. These are important information, which will be attained and handed over to the Administrative Department subsequently to be collated for the Operations Department to have oversight in their negotiations.

The staffs in the Sales Department have to be patience, professional, and sensitive. It is not uncommon to meet frustrated clients. The staffs also need to ensure that they are getting the best information from our clients, even if it means prying into private life issues. The rationale is to ensure that our Operations Department will have the best edge when we negotiate. In all, the Sales Department will provide assessment on the case after understanding about it, start initial solution planning with our clients, and anticipate in a forward looking manner the potential pitfalls of the various preliminary plans. When these are finalized and the client is agreeable, the information will be captured by our Administrative Department.

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The Administrative Department serves a role similar to that of a central command cell. The synergy of the information and relevance to the various departments are optimized here. KX-Unit’s digitization to use technology has also facilitated this process.
In simple terms, the Administrative Department process the documents received from the Sales Department for Operation use. They look ahead for the standard needs of an operation team and ensure that these are prepared from the get-go. Some of these documents include the Proof of Debt, warrant to act, Letter of Demand and more. Before an operation, the Administrative Department would have already organized and pre-stored a folder for that particular case with all the information needed by the operations team. This is also the benefit of going electronic, as various departments are able to optimize their time, effort and focus on their necessary role.

As the central processing department, all information that flows through will be scrutinized again to ensure that there are no discrepancies or anomalies. Once done, a Profile Search will be initiated by the Administrative Department based on the information of the Sales Department to value add to the Operation Department. Information like the debtor’s last known whereabouts, exact business address, residential address, license plate number, etc. will be acquired lawfully if possible, for the Operations Department to use where needed.

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By now, the information has been well fused and optimized for an actual operation. The Operations Department receives this information and initiates the first few interactions with the debtor. They plan for on-the-ground tactics and contingencies based on the case profile they have received. Before every operation, they will speak to the Sales and Administrative department to clarify the case situation, if any. Most of the time these inter-sharing can happen at the man-to-man level, as our Sales and Operations offices are only 2 levels away.

Once the Operations Department is confident about the information, legal documents, and debtor’s whereabouts, they will proceed with the operations. They will serve a Letter of Demand to the debtor and actively engage discussion. However, every case is different and the Operations Department will have to temper their ground approaches to ensure that they achieve the best outcome for our client. For simple cases, KX-Unit has an established Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to follow. For the more complex cases, especially those that are potentially sensitive, more pre-ops planning will be accorded. As negotiations on the ground are highly dynamic, the Operations Department must have the patience, sharpness, mission-focus, empathy and perseverance to achieve the best outcome. We deal with debtors who may actively evade us, lie to us, malign us, and even sue us. The Operations Department must be 2 to 3 steps ahead to anticipate and correct such instances, and bring the negotiation back to the topic again.

When a debt is successfully recovered, we will provide the debtor with a Settlement form to certify that the debt is paid and fully cleared. In other cases, an installment form will be provided. This is to safeguard the debtor’s as well, and is only fair.

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The Marketing and Communications Department looks at how we interact with the general public, and takes care of KX-Unit’ s public responses. With every case we undertake, are exposed to, and solve, KX-Unit achieves more experience and knowledge. But knowledge is only useful if it can be collated and presented in digestible bits for others to learn. Knowledge management in KX-Unit is a strong culture; we often share what was done right and wrong, what can be better, what was unique about a case and more. Once these lessons are learnt, we ask ourselves: is there anything that we can do to share with the general public to generate awareness? After all, we deal with many scam cases and with the rise of scam cases today, it would do more good than harm to share some knowledge with the public.

The Marketing and Communications Department also share with the general public about the Debt Collection industry in general, to create more awareness about an industry that is often easily mistaken. More specifically, we share how KX-Unit is progressing, think and re-think the ethics of our profession, share about our job scope, our services, our humble beginnings and more. Whenever KX-unit takes on a case that is featured on the mass media, the Marketing and Communications Department also crafts our own Press Release to be posted on our Facebook Page for our stakeholders to read and understand from our perspective. The Department also responds to Facebook messages and post replies to comments.

Ultimately, the various departments have an organic role to play independently, but they are synergized to serve our client’s best interest with the utmost professionalism and commitment to quality service. The rigor and integrity of KX-Unit’s systems, checks and balances, documentation, knowledge management, and knowledge sharing serves to do the best that we can for our client, our staffs, and for the public. The many cases that KX-Unit has undertaken have provided us with the procedural foresight to take the right move at the right time for our client’s best interest. Feel free to contact KX-Unit at +65 6291 3656 or +65 8112 7790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com if you have any queries on past cases or about the services we offer. You can also visit our website at http://www.KX-Unit.com/

In this week’s Debtor’s Spotlight, KX-unit will be sharing a romantically related case. Our client is a lady in her 40s, while the debtor is a married man in his 40s. The debtor is a married man with children. Our client first got to know the debtor at a business conference. As both of them are business owners, they initially saw potential for business collaboration and partnership. Their interactions slowly evolved into a romantic relationship. Little did our client know, then, that the debtor was in this for her money. In fact, the debtor hid his marital status from our client and continued his charming tactics on her – which explains our title.
The debtor has a few businesses, most of which were conceived and supported by our client. He has managed to use our client’s business network to source for investment and in some sense our client has become a vouching voice for him, whether or not she was kept in the loop.

During the time they were together, our client would support him with whatever amount he needed. This continued throughout the time they were together, until our client came to a realization that he was not actually in love with her. In fact, he may well be out to fool her. It was from then that our client requested that the debtor provide an acknowledgement that he took money from her, and that acknowledgement should show how much was taken.
While the debtor was not sincere or true about the relationship, he did agree to our client’s request initially and eventually provided a working sum of $200,000. This was the sum that was taken from our client, and the sum that he would return the money in installment.

For the past one year, the debtor has made some payment month by month. He pays about $1000 to $2000 to our client. As such, there is still a sum of about $180,000 that remains to be returned. Realizing the amount of time it will take for the debtor to repay, and hoping to get this ordeal behind her, our client agreed to waive half of the initial sum and told the debtor that he only needed to pay half of the $100,000.

When he heard this, the debtor immediately agreed but said that he would not be signing any document. In other words, all that our client had was some Whatsapp messages as a proof, without any IOUs or agreement. But at this point we would question: why was he unwilling to sign a document that states that he only needs to pay back half of the sum he owes? This was supposed to be good news for him, but his actions raises some question. How long did he intend to take to pay off the entire debt by installment if he was paying a one to two thousand dollars a month? Was he even sincere about following through with the payment if it meant that it would take years? If he was sincere, why would be flatly refuse to sign an agreement that was to his benefit?

Perhaps the only reason was that he had no intention of fully repaying the sum. Payment by installment was a stalling tactic. After all, a sum of one to two thousand dollars for a business owner like himself was not exactly a challenge.
KX-Unit advised our client that without an IOU or agreement, this case would become a Claims and Dispute Management. Nonetheless, we represented our client to engage the debtor to seek negotiation for our client’s best interest. The debtor was informed of our involvement and he initially signaled his intent to negotiate with us. In fact, he set up the first meeting with us at our office saying that he had “confidential” information to pass to us. He even requested that our Senior Negotiator personally negotiated with him.

However, on the actual day of the meeting, he denied everything. He denied that he owed our client money or that he took any loan amount from her. In fact, he turned the tables around and claimed that our client owed him money! This was supposedly the confidential information that he was referring to. In view of his claims, our senior negotiator calmly asked him for proof that our client did owe him money. After all, the purpose of our meet up was to clarify and have a mutually stable ground for a settlement. However, he was unable to provide any information. In other words, he was making baseless claims either to stall the development of the case or to simply not cooperate.

Just before we agreed to have a second meeting to have another round of negotiation, he served a lawyer letter to us for our client in our office. While we fully respect his right to serve to pursue the matter with legal means, we find his actions and intention highly doubtful and suspect. From getting with our client for his business, to paying by disproportionate installments, to not agreeing to sign an agreement for a discounted debt, to calling us to personally speak to our senior negotiator, to actually sitting down with us to negotiate before nonchalantly throwing the lawyer letter at the table (when he could have mailed the letter to our client). It almost appears as if the debtor was orchestrating a grand show so he can enter with pomp and leave in style. And obviously these would tell us a lot about this person’s character, his disposition and his tactics. This egotistic charm that he sought to feed was eventually clear to all parties.

As the case is on going, we continue to provide our client with necessary guidelines and procedures before she decides her next course of action. At KX-Unit we believe strongly in the principles behind what we do. At a particular place and time, within our means, and in our own ways we will continue to uphold the professionalism and integrity of our work in getting our client’s best interest. Our service extends even beyond our operations for our client. KX-Unit will continue to remain fully committed and support the consultative needs of our client.

KX-Unit remains true and committed to our principles and creed. We service with utmost professionalism and integrity for the best interest of our client. We train our staffs and negotiators to be mission focused and alert. Our service does not stop even when a case has taken a new turn. We at KX-Unit pursue the principles behind what we do for our client, and we will provide that after support for our client to achieve their best interest. The many cases that KX-Unit has undertaken have provided us with the procedural foresight that could be time-critical for our client. Feel free to contact KX-Unit at +65 6291 3656 or +65 8112 7790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com if you have any quries about the above case or about the services we offer. You can also visit our website at http://www.KX-Unit.com/

This week’s Scam Case Series will feature an Advisory Edition on the Small and Medium Enterprises’ (SMEs) Business Investment and Acquisitions. This advisory is apt given that the recent business climate has been relatively vibrant. Trade associations and various governmental bodies have plans slated to boost the economy. However, there has also been a rise in trends of scam cases in Singapore.

Based on the recent cases undertaken by KX-Unit itself, close to half of the cases we received from our Anti-Scam Assessment (ASA) deals with elements of scammers or business plans that are too good to be true. To set the stage right, a general advice to keep in mind is the old adage that if something is too good to be true, it usually is.

Nonetheless, this article will highlight a few ways that KX-Unit’s Anti-Scam Assessment (ASA) is invoked to help our clients systematically with business analyses and background checks. The Advisory will be split into 3 parts: Background Check, Business Plans or Proposals, and Contractual Agreements.

1) Background Check
A background check can come in many forms. It may feature a specific focus on the individual, or their company. Accordingly, details about a person or company’s track record, business history, financial reliability, and more are systematically analyzed under KX-Unit’s Anti-Scam Assessment rubrics.

These information are generally available for purchase online. Credit Bureau Singapore is one of the many sources available as “Singapore’s most comprehensive consumer credit bureau” to enhance Singapore’s “risk management capability”. A reasonably complete risk profile of a customer can be obtained to provide prospective business partners with more information. However, the information may not be immediately comprehensible to all, as some industries require in-depth and tacit understanding to make sense of the data obtained. The staffs at KX-Unit, with their vast and in-depth experience accumulated over the many cases that has been undertaken is in a good position to help clients understand and interpret these information.

Some of the other sources include Bizfile from ACRA and also Datapool. KX-Unit have frequently used the above mentioned sources to systematically analyze for our clients the risk profile of their prospective business partners and also interpret the many patterns and trends, numerical data, and more for our client. At the end of the day, we sincerely believe that if you are undertaking a business proposition involving $10,000 or more, then you should consider investing a little bit more in a service like KX-Unit’s ASA. It would do you more good than harm to have a check done, and get professional third party advice before jumping into a proposal.

After all, you will want to know if your prospective client has had a track record of starting and closing businesses, and if this happens within less than a year what it could mean, etc. The key is that every case is different and the context governing them is also different. Rather than adopting your own mental model towards assessing risk, it might be good to get a third party perspective to interpret and provide some advice.

2) Business Plans or Proposal
Next, every business needs a business plan and proposal. But do you actually understand how money will be taken from you to be invested? Is it taken as a loan or as an investment? Is what you are being told the same as the actual business plan?
These are important because con artists and scammers have the ability to work like a salesman, and not any type of salesmen but only the unscrupulous ones. They work conscientiously to sell you their confidence and the façade of their resourcefulness. It is usually very telling because one of the indications of such charming scammers is that they have only a very general knowledge of the business proposal, if it even exists. They work hard to sell you their good will and gain your trust, even making you feel awkward and embarrassed sometimes to pressure you into committing to the business proposal.

But fret not, because at the end of the day it all boils down to THE plan. Ask yourself a few questions: Is there actually a systematic plan? Have you given your trust already? Do you actually understand the plan? Are you going to make more than 10k from the business? And if you are, is it worth it to take the risk of a possible scam? Chances are, you may be told that this new plan is out to “penetrate new business markets” and that it’s pointless to check out for existing information because it has not been out there yet. When such things happen, take a step back, and always seek to get more information (refer to part 1). If you think it is worth it, get a third party opinion, because a thirty party will always see a clearer picture. KX-Unit will have the necessary experience to help.

3) Contractual agreement
Last but not least, the fine print in the contractual agreement. Even if there appears to be a coherent and sound plan, what will matter is also ultimately what you put your signature to Ideally, the best course of action is to get a lawyer who deals with commercial transactions to vet the contract. In this way, whatever loopholes in the contract will be surfaced. That said industry experts and consultants with the relevant experience are able to provide you with a holistic assessment. This includes not just looking through the contracts systematically, but also the track records of the individual and company.

Generally, based on the cases that KX-Unit have undertaken, there is a tendency for most people to look at a contract and get a sense that they can be protected by a “black and white”. But this may actually be a façade. This is because the contract may actually include clauses that state that that the dealing is more of a “loan rather than investment” and also that there will be “no liability that will be borne by them”. Some cases involve contract that must be signed overseas so they cannot be enforced in Singapore. There are simply too many different tactics employed by scammers out there.

KX-Unit hopes that this short edition has provided crucial information for SMEs with who may have plans to expand. Ultimately, business propositions are no small matter, and if you consider that some information (which is not known to you then) can potentially avert a grave corporate disaster, it might actually make more business sense to seek a professional opinion.
KX-Unit warmly extends our professional services to you, our expertise and exposure to countless complex cases of Debt and Scam Cases have provided us with a critical understanding on various trends typical to a particular industry. Objective analysis on business owners and their temperaments through various sources are also part of our KX-Consultancy initiative, of which Anti-Scam Assessment is a part of. So, feel free to contact KX-Unit at 8112 7790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com. Alternatively, you can visit our website at http://www.KX-Unit.com for more information.

KX-Unit is happy to share with the joy of our client. We have successfully helped our client in a relation with TWC2 on 2 foreign worker on Work Permit Pass that their employer refuse to pay their salary even after MOM have Court Order against the company. And we are glad to be able to assist this case for the Charity Organization on a Pro-Bono basis.

Factor in that this case is on a Pro-Bono basis(with not much operational budget available for the case) and also the Client needed the repayment to be recover as soon as possible(as they are on temporary pass permit to stay in Singapore). It has been a case with multiple complex issues to resolve.

Nevertheless, the case was not easy because of the debtor’s non-communication tendencies, KX-Unit is proud to say that we have retained our high level of professionalism. We carefully initiated and steered the dialogue and subsequently the negotiations to achieve our client’s best interest. Within 4 days of 2 visits, we are happy that our client is able to recover his rightful amount and resolve the case amicably. The staffs at KX-Unit take great pride in providing the value-added and quality service for our clients, as this picture testifies – we have done so, and will continue to do so.

Your interest is our wholehearted priority. If you do require a professional opinion on your own situation, or if you do know someone that may have such a need, feel free to contact KX-Unit at +65 9610 3425 (Jet Guo) or +65 81127790 or drop us a mail at enquiries@KX-Unit.com if you have any queries on this case or our services, and we will be most willing to advise. Alternatively,
you may visit our website at http://www.KX-Unit.com/