Industry: Higher Education

Location: Senegal, France, UK

Results: Successfully traced a hard-to-locate international student for down payment on a large educational debt.

Background:

An international student from Senegal failed to make payments on a large student loan balance with a U.S. University.

After four months of internal efforts with no response or payments, the client placed the delinquent account with Cedar Financial for education debt collection efforts.

The Challenge:

Locating an international student who had gone “off the grid” and failed to respond to the University’s request for payment, with outdated contact information.

The client believed that the student – originally from Senegal – had moved to France, but never received a response at that address and was at a loss as to how to proceed.

How Cedar Financial Solved the Problem:

After our initial skip tracing and collections efforts failed to return any new information, the local office looped in our International Manager for assistance. Leveraging years of expertise and out-of-the-box thinking, the Manager found the student and re-established contact within a week of the claim’s placement with our office.

While the student was originally from Senegal, went to school in the U.S. and was believed to be living in France, our professional team worked together to quickly locate the current address in the UK and secure a down payment from the previously MIA debtor, preventing a write-off for our client.

The Takeaway:

Sometimes the biggest challenge in international debt collection isn’t getting your student to pay – it’s finding them in the first place. Debtors move or seem to disappear when the bills come due, making it impossible to recover your funds.

Cedar Financial has the resources and experience to help you reconnect with your students. With our expert international skip tracing team, top databases, and on-the-ground education debt collectors, we quickly uncover the info you need to get paid.