Debt Collection Agency Colombia - No Win, No Fee

Step 1 - How does amicable (pre-legal) debt collection work in Colombia?

Amicable collection in Colombia starts the moment a claim is overdue. Where a due date was agreed, default (mora) arises automatically on that date: no demand letter is legally required to put the debtor in default (Código Civil art. 1608). A formal judicial demand is required only in the rarer case where no due date was ever fixed.

How contact works

Two statutes shape how a consumer debtor can be contacted. Ley 2300 de 2023 ("Ley Dejen de Fregar", the Stop Bothering law) limits collectors to channels the debtor has authorised, one channel per week and one contact per day once direct contact begins, and only Monday to Friday 7am-7pm and Saturday 8am-3pm, never Sundays or public holidays. References, guarantors and joint debtors get the same protection. Ley 2573 de 2026, in force since 19 May 2026, adds a further safeguard: the moment a debtor reports suplantación de identidad (identity theft), the collector must immediately suspend all collection activity, including accrued interest and costs, and give the debtor 20 business days to file a criminal complaint with the Fiscalía General de la Nación (the Attorney General's Office); if no complaint arrives in time, collection, including the suspended interest and costs, may resume.

When to escalate

Escalation to court is a separate, approved step, never automatic. It becomes worthwhile once the debtor stops responding, repeatedly breaks an agreed instalment plan, or clearly cannot pay without a court order forcing the issue - and once you have a document (an accepted invoice, contract or promissory note) that can serve as an enforceable title.

Step 2 - How do you obtain an enforceable title in Colombia?

Where a claim is undisputed and you already hold a qualifying document - an invoice accepted by the debtor, a signed contract, or a promissory note - you can go straight to the executive process (proceso ejecutivo) via a título ejecutivo (enforceable title, CGP art. 422), skipping an ordinary declaratory claim entirely. Notification of the court's payment order (mandamiento ejecutivo) itself serves as formal notice of default where none existed before (CGP art. 423).

Which route and which court

Where you do not yet hold an enforceable title, the route depends on claim value. A claim up to 40 SMLMV (currently around COP 70 million) goes through the single-instance "proceso verbal sumario" (summary verbal proceeding) before a juez civil municipal, with no appeal (CGP art. 390, parágrafo 1o). A claim from 40 to 150 SMLMV, or above 150 SMLMV, goes through the ordinary, appealable track before the corresponding first-instance court (CGP arts. 17-20, 25).

Costs

Colombia has no general ad valorem court or filing fee: Ley 1653 de 2013, the one law that tried to create one, was declared entirely unconstitutional (Sentencia C-169-14). Litigation cost exposure is mainly each side's own attorney fees, plus the winner's court-set "agencias en derecho" allowance, which the losing party pays under the general loser-pays rule (CGP art. 365). This differs from jurisdictions that charge a percentage-based filing fee: in Colombia the constitutional baseline is that access to justice itself is free, so cost exposure comes only from legal representation and the loser-pays allowance.

More on court proceedings in Colombia

Enforceable titles and variable interest

A título ejecutivo can cover both principal and accruing interest at a variable rate without stating the exact percentage in the claim (CGP art. 424), which suits a claim carrying statutory interest that changes month to month.

Prescription as a defence

Prescription in Colombia is never applied by a judge on their own motion. It must be raised by the debtor, whether by action or by exception, and can even be raised by the debtor's own creditors (Código Civil art. 2513). It can be interrupted naturally, when the debtor acknowledges the debt, or civilly, by a judicial demand, in which case the full period restarts (Código Civil art. 2539).

Step 3 - How does debt enforcement work in Colombia?

Colombia runs enforcement through a single judicial track: the same civil judge who issued the payment order also decrees and directs embargo (attachment), secuestro (judicial sequestration) and remate (public judicial auction) of the debtor's assets. Colombia has no separate private-bailiff or enforcement-agent profession; court-appointed auxiliares de la justicia (secuestres, peritos and auctioneers) assist under the judge's supervision but do not independently control the process (CGP art. 467).

Ways to enforce

• Embargo: attachment of bank accounts, wages and income subject to statutory limits, and other assets.
• Secuestro: judicial sequestration, taking custody of movable or immovable assets pending sale.
• Remate: public judicial auction of the sequestered assets, with proceeds applied to the debt.

What answers for the debt

Under the universal-patrimony principle, all of a debtor's present and future movable and immovable assets answer for a personal obligation, except assets the law declares non-seizable (Código Civil art. 2488).

The enforcement authority

The enforcement authority is the ordinary civil court itself, not a separate agency. This differs from jurisdictions with a dedicated bailiff profession: in Colombia, one judge issues the title, orders the seizure and directs the sale, all within the same proceeding.

Costs of enforcement

Enforcement costs include the fees of court-appointed auxiliaries (secuestres, peritos and auctioneers), set case by case rather than as a fixed statutory percentage, and are additional to the litigation costs described in Step 2.

Wages and other income

Colombian law protects a baseline of a debtor's salary and other periodic income from attachment; the exact statutory limit depends on the type of income and the debtor's circumstances, so your partner checks the applicable limit case by case rather than assuming a fixed percentage.

Distribution of proceeds

Proceeds from a remate are distributed among creditors in the order set by the Civil Code's creditor-priority scheme, described in Step 4 below, after covering the costs of the sale itself.

When enforcement does not recover the debt

If a search for seizable assets comes up empty, or the debtor faces multiple enforcement claims from other creditors, the case may move into the insolvency track covered in Step 4 below.

Cross-border debt collection in Colombia

Colombia is not an EU or EEA member state, so none of the EU's cross-border tools apply: no European Payment Order, no European Small Claims Procedure, and no Brussels I Recast automatic recognition of judgments.

Foreign arbitral awards

Colombia acceded to the 1958 New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards on 25 September 1979 (in force 24 December 1979), with no reservation recorded against its entry, so a foreign arbitral award is enforceable in Colombia under the Convention's standard terms.

Foreign court judgments

A foreign court judgment takes effect in Colombia only through the classic exequátur procedure before the Corte Suprema de Justicia, Sala de Casación Civil (Supreme Court of Justice, Civil Cassation Chamber, CGP art. 607), applying whatever reciprocity the foreign country in fact grants Colombian judgments absent an applicable treaty. The court checks, among other things, that the judgment does not conflict with rights over Colombian property or with Colombian public policy, that it is final under its own country's law, and that the original defendant was properly served (CGP arts. 605-606).