Most merchants pursuing a withheld balance are running the claim themselves: emails from the finance team, a lawyer's letter when patience runs out, escalating cost and attention against a counterparty for whom this is routine. Assignment restructures that situation. It is the mechanism at the centre of how we work, and it is worth understanding precisely — both what it does and what it does not.
What the CARA does
Under a Claim Assignment and Recovery Agreement, the claim itself — the entitlement to the withheld settlement, the unreleased reserve, the unsupported deductions — is assigned to JvHAM. We become the Assignee and the claimant of record. The counterparty receives a Notice of Assignment, after which it deals with us: our correspondence, our reconciliation, our counsel.
Three practical consequences follow.
The claim is held by a party built to run it. A merchant pursues a claim in the gaps between running a business. An Assignee whose entire operation is merchant claims pursues it as the day's work — with the documentary record organised to the standard the process demands, the quantum built by a financial controller, and the legal track chosen rather than stumbled into.
The procedural objections fall away. A familiar repertoire meets merchants who pursue claims directly: questions about who within the company has authority to pursue the matter, requests to re-verify and re-document what has already been sent, the slow re-opening of settled points each time a new case handler appears. This repertoire works because it costs the counterparty little and the merchant a great deal. Against a claimant of record whose files arrive complete, whose correspondence is consistent, and whose patience is professional rather than personal, the repertoire stops paying.
The conversation stops being about the relationship. Merchant-counterparty correspondence carries history: the four years of fees paid, the termination's sting, the hope — sometimes — of being re-onboarded. All of it leaks into the negotiation, and none of it helps. The Assignee's correspondence is about one thing: the file.
What you keep
Assignment moves the claim; it does not move the value. You retain the economic entitlement: the agreed share of the Recovered Amount — between 25% and 75%, calibrated to the complexity of the file — flows to you under the CARA. You retain information rights: you know what is happening on the file. And the costs sit where they were agreed to sit: Legal Costs are carried by us, with no upfront cost to you.
What you give up is the burden — the correspondence, the reconciliation, the procedural attrition — and the claim's title, which is precisely the part that was producing the burden.
Two questions come up in nearly every engagement conversation, so let us answer them here. Does assignment mean losing control? You are not consulted on every letter — that is the point — but material decisions on the file, including settlement, are governed by the CARA's terms, and you see what is happening throughout. Is the split negotiable? It is calibrated, not haggled: the complexity of the file — jurisdiction, counterparty posture, the state of the documentary record — sets where in the 25–75% range a file lands, which is also why a well-secured record is worth real money to you before we ever see it.
Why the counterparty's calculus changes
Consider the position from the other side of the table, because that is where assignment does its work.
A counterparty holding a merchant's funds is making a quiet, continuous cost-benefit judgment: what does delay cost us, and what does it earn us? Against an individual merchant, delay is cheap and effective. Every month of "ongoing review" is a month the merchant's lawyer bills for, a month the finance team spends elsewhere, a month closer to the merchant accepting a discount just to end it. The counterparty has run this calculation many times before, against many merchants, and it knows the base rates.
Against a specialised Assignee, every term in that calculation moves.
Delay stops degrading the claim. The file does not get tired, does not lose the thread when an employee leaves, does not need this quarter's cash badly enough to take thirty cents on the euro.
The documentary record is already at procedural standard. The gap between "disputed correspondence" and "a file ready for the next track" is where counterparties usually find their leverage. When the reconciliation is done, the timeline is built and the quantum is evidenced, that gap is gone — and the counterparty can see that it is gone from the first letter it receives.
Escalation is credible without being shouted. A merchant threatening proceedings may or may not follow through, and the counterparty prices that doubt. An Assignee that exists to run claims, holding a supervisory track and a legal track it demonstrably knows how to use, does not need to threaten anything. The Notice of Assignment itself communicates the operating posture: this file will be worked to a conclusion, on whichever track it requires.
None of this guarantees an outcome — nothing does, and you should distrust anyone who says otherwise. What it changes are the incentives: settlement tends to become the counterparty's cheapest option earlier, because the alternatives stopped being cheap.
The conversation it produces
The practical effect, in file after file, is a change in register. Correspondence that was being answered in generic paragraphs starts being answered specifically. Requests for an accounting that had been pending for months produce schedules. The "review" acquires a scope and, eventually, an end. Not because anyone had a change of heart — because the cost-benefit judgment that produced the silence now points the other way.
That is what assignment is for. Not a magic word, but a reallocation: the claim moves to the party best equipped to carry it, the burden leaves your finance team, and the counterparty meets a claimant whose economics it cannot outwait.
Whether your file fits this model is exactly what a fit review answers. Submit a fit check — five minutes, eight fields, no upfront cost, an initial view within five business days. The mechanics are defined in the glossary, and how we run the file from there is set out in our approach.
This article is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.