EuroDebt Partners With Money Angels

June 2009

Innovative partnership gives landlords and letting agents greater flexibility to help cash-strapped tenants

Leading debt solutions provider, EuroDebt Financial Services, has joined forces with Money Angels, specialists in energy and utility management for UK Letting Agents and Housing Associations. The initial partnership was launched in January 2009, with EuroDebt offering clients and any UK resident the facility to use Money Angels' Energy Switching Service in order to manage their finances better. It now gives landlords and letting agents access to EuroDebt's market leading range of debt solutions, enabling them to help tenants struggling with their finances.

EuroDebt believes families and individuals need as much help as possible to improve their financial circumstances. And in the rental sector landlords and letting agents can play an important role in helping tenants which, in turn, will increase the likelihood of outstanding arrears being paid.

"There is a real balancing act for landlords and letting agents when tenants fall into arrears" confirmed Kevin Still, Director, EuroDebt. "And more often than not it really doesn't make sense to evict the tenant, with all the associated costs more than likely to see the landlord out of pocket. Our goal in working with Money Angels and its network of residential letting agents is to give them access to our extensive national network of debt advisors and our comprehensive debt solutions, enabling them to help their tenants.

Money Angels, established in 2007, provides a range of services to landlords and letting agents to manage energy and utility services for tenants. Lewis Taylor, Managing Director, Money Angels believes adding the EuroDebt debt solutions to its core offering will play a crucial role in helping lettings agents, landlords and tenants deal with rent arrears in a very positive way.

"Money Angels has created an innovative and flexible solution for landlords and letting agents to manage the utility supply for their tenants. But they are still faced with administrative and financial problems if tenants fall behind with their rent or utility bills.

"By adding EuroDebt's debt solutions to our offering, we are giving landlords and property managers' a proven way of ensuring outstanding rent and utility bills are prioritised for payment. In our experience, there is a very long process when it comes to evicting tenants who have fallen into arrears and the landlord is still not guaranteed any payments in many cases. We see our partnership with EuroDebt as a valuable step forward for the UK property lettings sector, which should see the number of evictions due to bad debt reduce whilst the property rental income will increase due to a lower amount of tenants in prolonged rent arrears and reduced down time."

EuroDebt aims to help consumers with both their secure and unsecured creditors, especially where they have multiple credit cards and loans. EuroDebt is able to prioritise payment of rent arrears to property managers in the first month after their appointment and also notifies the unsecured lenders that the individual has entered a Debt Management Plan. This involves no further borrowing and in the majority of instances, lenders agree to freeze interest & charges, meaning that recovery activities stop, the debt balance will begin to reduce at a rate based upon the negotiated reduced payments to creditors and the individual can begin to take control of their finances again. Payment proposals are presented to creditors in a consistent manner and all the figures quoted in the income and expenditure analysis will have been verified through a home visit conducted by a EuroDebt debt advisor.

A Debt Management Plan may be for a relatively short period, ranging from 12 months to 3 years or a long-term plan that enables individuals to become debt free. The flexibility of a Debt Management Plan also allows clients to resume contractual payments where creditors accept EuroDebt's proposals of a reasonable offer for a transitional period until the client's circumstances change or the rent arrears have been cleared.

EuroDebt, unlike any other fee charging Debt Management Company, is the only debt management business that makes home visits a core component of its 'fact find' process, ensuring a complete picture of each individual's situation is gained. At the visit, the debt advisor is able to assess not only priority expenditure, like rent, council tax and utilities, but any arrears on these payments. Repayment arrangements to clear arrears are a priority to protect a client's tenancy and family.

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