BLOGS

Time plays a key role in this world of law. Notices sent through law generally become time-bound, and delayed delivery can negatively impact businesses. In the world of debt collection, it is essential to send out timely legal letters as it becomes harder for banks and financial institutions to resolve older debts. Dispatching timely legal notices becomes an essential part for banks and financial institutions issuing legal notices for borrowers who are declared NPA. In case a customer defaults on payment, organisations are compelled to take action aimed at recovering the owed amount, mostly using formal and legal manners. Most of the commonly used methods involve sending legal letters to defaulters as notice of debt and demand for repayment.

For any bank, financial institutions or fintech concerned with cases or any individual who has defaulted or declared as NPA, they initiate the process of dispatching legal notices associated with the case or the portfolio through courier services or postal mail, which involves a large number of operational flaws like inefficiencies and delay in the delivery of legal notices, risks and compliant requirements, and the lack of real time tracking of the dispatch status of each letters. The following are some of the key challenges that make the operational aspect from printing to dispatching legal notices cumbersome and an outdated practice.

Timeliness and Delays: The Hidden Risk of Late Delivery

The biggest weakness of manual delivery of legal notices is undoubtedly the hidden risk of delay. In most instances, this implies that delay becomes damaging where there is some time-sensitive service requirement in relation to the service of a legal notice which may be required within some window to take advantage of certain litigation or regulatory timeframes, especially in debt collection and recovery. Missed windows can have significant negative impacts on the legal status of a bank, financial institution and NBFC’s, or its ability to take further action.

Proof of Delivery: An Obstacle to Legal Accountability

Proof of delivery is an important aspect in proceedings relating to law. Without this, a party cannot establish that the notice was actually received by the intended recipient. While it is always a very cumbersome and unpredictable process with manually printing bulk data, tracking of returned individual legal letters becomes a hectic task. This non-verifiable evidence may throw difficulties in the court and water down judicial procedures and further delay the debt resolution process.

Time-Burdened Administrative Load: More Time Spent on Paperwork Than Actual Legal Work

The drafting, printing, addressing envelopes, postage costs, and follow-ups are all administrative work that eats up precious time and resources. They act as a diversion for more strategic, higher-value legal work and impact the efficiency and productivity of an organization. In an age when automation is taking over, relying on manual processes only adds unnecessary complexity to the workflow.

Risk of Error: Simple Mistakes Can Have Huge Consequences

Every manual process comes with a risk of human error. With legal notices, it might be a misspelled name, wrong address, or missing jurisdiction-specific procedures that may result in not receiving the notice or not having any legal basis for action. These errors may further result in delay, fines, and even losing the case. While most legal notices are expected to be accurate and precise at the time of dissemination, this process is relatively prone to errors when using manual systems.

Compliance and data privacy & security concerns:

Legal notices often contain various types of rules and regulations regarding compliance in one jurisdiction as compared to another, and in this difference, it may become cumbersome and intimidating for the practitioner. When data is sent for printing there is a huge risk of unauthorized parties accessing the sensitive data. Perhaps there may be requirements regarding the manner of delivery of notices in a given specific jurisdiction-such as by mail or in hand-or even by other possible methods. It is not possible to maintain them in manual record-keeping. As such, it also poses a threat of delay and denial of legal standing.

Lack of Standardization: Differences in Delivery of Notice

Another weakness of manual processes is the lack of standardization. Legal notices have to be written, formatted, and delivered consistently for them to hold their legal standing. The notices are very susceptible to differences in tone, structure, and even content when using manual processes. Manually sending out the legal letters requires huge manpower to handle the various operational aspects of printing and dispatching each legal notice.

Limited Ability to Track- Delivery Status Uncertain

Perhaps one of the more egregious inadequacies of delivering notices by hand is the inability to track a notice in real time. Without digital tracking, it becomes merely a wait for a confirmation of receipt - even if that happens at all. It breeds uncertainty and can be particularly unsettling in timely legal matters where confirmation of receipt is paramount. Automated systems, on the other hand, enable real-time tracking-so that parties can check the status of a notice and act accordingly and immediately .

Tracking: A Downside of Creating Paper Trails

When notices are delivered manually, it becomes extremely difficult to ensure that all communications are kept accurate. Manually filed paper copies and delivery confirmations to the lack of tracking all documents by ensuring everything is documented to be referred to later requires tremendous organization. Without digital records, important information cannot be obtained promptly, and the organization is likely to respond with delay and error to any legal matter or dispute. In addition, tracing the returned letters in a manual system is quite laborious and error-prone.

Storage of data

Sending legal letters out would produce a huge papertrail that has to be managed and followed up with precision to have an entire case trail for all communications sent out. Moreover, the paper based system not only wastes precious time but also introduces a considerable risk of errors, loss of documents, and inefficiencies. Legal professionals should maintain and put away numerous paper copies of their communications, which would soon be a warehousing problem-especially with complicated cases involving several parties and deadlines. The task of handling all the paper work is not only time consuming but would probably make it difficult to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the records.

Why the Future of Legal Notice Delivery Is in Automation?

In the current modern economic world, large banks and financial institutions are struggling to manage their large requirements of printing, dispatching legal communications and managing the case trials of individual letters. Mobicule’s solution “Print-to-post” aims to address this issue with its efficiency and cost-effectiveness, with one single click automated, fully secured solution. It strives to address the operational inefficiencies associated with the process printing and dispatching bulk debt resolution legal & litigation notices. Intelligent “Print-to-Post” has directly integrated with India Post which delivers an efficient dashboard view of real time dispatch status tracking.