The first distinction to make is between financial debts and commercial debts: financial debts concern mortgages, loans, and unpaid financing, referring to credits related to banks, leasing and factoring companies, and financial institutions.
On the other hand, commercial debts are those granted by commercial companies and are related to commercial, industrial, and artisanal enterprises of various kinds. Whether they are commercial or financial debts, debtors can be public entities or private companies, and debt recovery can occur judicially or extrajudicially.
Extrajudicial debt collection is an activity that does not involve traditional judicial proceedings but is based on a procedure carried out without the control of a judge, occurring through written or telephone reminders made by the creditor personally or with the assistance of an expert in the field. Extrajudicial debt recovery is usually used for \"easy collection\" debts, for which a few reminders are enough to prompt the debtor to pay the necessary amount.
Judicial debt recovery, on the other hand, is the most traditional form and involves the intervention of the Judicial Authority to obtain, from the Judge himself, a payment order directed to the debtor. This form of debt recovery is used for the collection of \"large amounts\" for which extrajudicial recovery procedures are not sufficient.
The most commonly used method for obtaining debt recovery judicially is through a request for a payment order (decreto ingiuntivo). Let's go through the various steps of the procedure:
- Send a formal notice and demand letter to the debtor, clearly explaining the origin of the debt and the payment terms;
- Request a payment order from the Judge to obtain the decreto ingiuntivo that will allow the creditor to collect the debt;
- Serve the payment order to the debtor;
- Serve the enforcement notice, which demands that the debtor pay the debt within 10 days of the notice;
- Serve/deposit the seizure notice before the competent Court for execution.