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The Power of CTOS in Solving Bad Debts

In this post, I am going to share the power of CTOS from my own experience.

The power of CTOS

On one Friday in September 2009, a customer (we shall address him Mr Bad Debt) who owed my employer about RM2K since 2005 suddenly called in. And he said that he would like to settle the outstanding.

I was quite surprised. Because this customer has been ignoring our calls, emails, letters including the letter of demand.

As I never encountered before, where a customer who owed my employer for quite some time suddenly would call in and wish to settle all outstanding. For most bad debt cases, the Credit Control Department had to engage an external collector and demand that payment from the bad paymasters.

It’s really not easy to get back those long outstanding amounts.

Three days after that, a guy from a local financial institution called. And said that he wished to know whether Mr Bad Debt had settled his long outstanding.

After a short conversation, I learned that Mr Bad Debt wishes to engage with financial services provided by the financial institution. But later his application was pending due to his company name and his name is in the CTOS system.

What is CTOS?

In case you have no idea what is CTOS, it is the short form for Credit Tip Off Service Sdn Bhd. It is a lead information system in Malaysia where clients can gather credit information about their customers or potential customers.

Usually, financial institutions would be very much in need of these services.

Because they need to evaluate the prospects before deciding whether they should provide credit facilities to their customers. In most cases, if the applicant or customer name appears in CTOS and still has unsettled debt, they will not get the credit facilities.

Who would take the risk, right?

What is CTOS for?

Personally, I think CTOS is a useful system. It offers its clients to check the financial status and other financial information of a potential customer before they decide whether they should provide credit facilities to the prospects.

It is hard to prevent bad debts from happening in an organization.

So, if the potential customer had a sign of bad debts, it is better to check in details before let him sign on the dotted lines.

No wonder Mr Bad Debt is so keen to settle his long outstanding.

Final thoughts

Everyone should be aware of CTOS. For organizations, CTOS might be able to reduce the possibilities of dealing with bad paymasters.

Or, in my story, the organization especially financial institution can force the bad debtor to settle his outstanding.

As for end-user like you and me, we must be aware that we can’t run away from paying and settling outstanding bills, invoices and loans.

Because there will be one day when we require financial services such as car loans or housing loans, we will be forced to settle all the outstanding based on CTOS or other credit systems.

For that purpose, CTOS is really a powerful tool.

9 thoughts on “The Power of CTOS in Solving Bad Debts”

  1. Hi Alan, yes, there was hooha about CTOS some time ago, but still a lot of organization prefer CTOS as it's more complete. Including my current company also using CTOS to check potential customer background before proceed with registration.

  2. I don't think they can afford to take away the system without a replacement, imagine ppl with bad credit getting loan approved and subsequently defaulting the payment. Even an advance country like US with advance credit rating system in place can run into such havoc today because bank/finance institutions abuse the credit requirement in place.

  3. Absolutely! Zen… there's another system, but somehow, corporates still prefer CTOS. I see that locally, in some cases, bank/financial institutions is abusing the credit facilities as well. No proper checking before approving the loan…

  4. Thank you so much for writing a lot of this good information! I am looking forward to reading more.

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