Swedish Enforcement Authority’s debt recovery activities

While the steps involved in the Authority’s case processing are carried out swiftly, in many cases processing times have been prolonged by long delays. This applies to both the payment order process and the enforcement process.

The processing of cases concerning payment orders involves a significant degree of automation. Most cases can therefore be processed expediently without any delays. Delays occur when cases are left pending, awaiting manual processing. The longest delays, often exceeding two months, occur while awaiting personal service. Almost half of all cases concerning payment orders are sent for personal service. Delays also occur when applications require further information, as these are processed manually and not all administrators are able to process them. More than half of all applications submitted via the Swedish Enforcement Authority’s online service need to be supplemented. A relatively large number of the applications submitted via the online service also concern disputed claims, where there is disagreement regarding the claim. However, the online applications account for a very small proportion of all payment order applications. That service is used primarily by private individuals.

The registration and approval of applications for enforcement are processed swiftly. This means that almost all cases can be referred for enforcement without delay. We have reviewed the processing times for cases involving first-time debtors. Investigating first-time debtors is a priority for the Swedish Enforcement Authority and is often completed quickly thanks to a standardised approach and automated data matching. Despite this, many of these cases remain pending while the debtor’s financial situation is being investigated. For 10 per cent of first-time debtors, it takes more than four months after the final payment date before the Swedish Enforcement Authority issues a seizure order or determines that there are no assets subject to attachment.

The Swedish Enforcement Authority carries out systematic quality assurance, including annual reviews of the quality of its case handling. These reviews identify shortcomings in quality and form the basis for improvement measures. They also make it possible to follow up on measures implemented previously.

The reviews show that the Swedish Enforcement Authority itself considers that the processing has serious legal shortcomings in a relatively high proportion of cases. The legal shortcomings that the Swedish National Audit Office considers are of the most serious nature are ones where the errors have had, or have risked having, consequences for the parties involved. Such shortcomings have occurred primarily in relation to enforcement. The most serious shortcoming is that investigations relating to the recovery of business assets have not been sufficiently thorough. This may have resulted in the Swedish Enforcement Authority failing to identify assets that could have been seized. Business debt recovery is a complex area requiring specialist expertise. The Swedish Enforcement Authority has taken certain measures to raise the level of expertise among its inspectors, but it is still too early to say whether this has had the desired effect.

Enforcement and personal service of documents are carried out at the Swedish Enforcement Authority’s 32 local offices across the country. We have examined the efficiency of the local offices by comparing their performance in relation to their resources. The audit shows that if all offices were as efficient as the most efficient ones, overall performance could increase by a few per cent. A likely explanation for the small differences in efficiency is that working methods do not differ significantly between the local offices. For enforcement and personal service operations to become significantly more efficient, it is not enough to learn from other offices; measures are required that the entire organisation can benefit from.