General Business Practices.

a.) Mandarin Chinese is the official national language and the language used in legal proceedings. Taiwanese is the local dialect, but most business can be conducted in Mandarin Chinese. English is not spoken widely, although it is more common in financial circles.
b.) The primary currency is the New Taiwan Dollar, often referred to verbally as the NT dollar and in writing as NT$.
c.) For business dealings, documents should be in English or Chinese.

Collections - General Information

A. Background of Industry

1.) As there is no collection association in Taiwan, it is hard to estimate a total amount of collections per year.
2.) The formal collections industry is very young. Until last year, only lawyers were officially permitted to collect, although a few collection agencies did operate as ?consultants??. There are not many collection agencies and most are less than three years in existence in Taiwan.
3.) Both consumer and commercial debt are collected.

B. Licencing Requirements

In Taiwan a business prescribes the business for which a company is approved to conduct. A collection agency must be have a business license approved for collections.

C. General proceedures

1.) For a typical collection case, initial efforts are conducted by phone and written correspondence, in an attempt to make contact and fix location. If contact cannot be established, applications are made to the relevant courts and government agencies that house information which may be of use to tracing a person. After the person is contacted, if payment is not quickly agreed upon, a visit is generally conducted to assess the financial situation and make further investigation. In other words, a combination of telephone work, written correspondence, court and government agency provided information, and site visits is generally used.
2.) Lawyers help with the preparation and solicitation of orders and documents from the courts. In particular, orders to pay, asset seizures, and the like need the involvement of an attorney.

D. Collection charges and remuneration

1.) Lawyers fees 2.) Collection agencies generally charge commission on the amount collected, and usually on a no collection/no fee basis. Fees average about 30-35%, but can be lower for larger amounts or higher for more difficult cases.
3.) Generally no collection charges can be passed to the debtor. 4.) Interest

E. Accounting and remitting

1.) There are no special requirements for currency transfers.
2.) Payments are generally made by wire transfer or bank draft, and generally they are made directly to the creditor. We obtain confirmation of the payment by the debtor and then invoice the creditor.
3.) There are no requirements for a special trust account for each client.

F. Miscellaneous

1.) At present United Credit Service does not regularly do skip tracing. As such, at this time there is no fee structure in place. We may add this to our formal services in the future in which case a fee would be established.
2.) Uncollectable debts are returned to the creditor for placement with another agent or some other means of disposition.
3.) In the event a cheque is dishonored, it is still recoverable within the following limit of time: - Cheque from drawer, one year from issued date. - Cheque from endorser, four months from the rejected date.