The Management Team

Shield Mercantile has an experienced management team:

Des Shields - Managing Director and Founder
Des is the strategic planner and founder of Shield Mercantile. Through his strong leadership, vision and tenacity, Des has created a unique market position for his company as a specialist in all facets of collections in Australia. Des established a national network to deal with the parochial nature of the debt collection and recovery industry. Through his relentless dedication he has created the best performing collection agency in Australasia, maximising returns to clients.

Dale Campbell – General Manager
Dale took on the role of General Manager at Shield Mercantile in February 2011. His successful career within the Finance industry spanning 22 years began in one of Australia’s leading banks. Successfully forging a name for himself as a reputable recoveries officer his interests eventually turned to Management, discovering his natural ability to lead, he has since been effective in a number of Management positions. As General Manager for Shield Mercantile he provides an abundance of industry knowledge and best practice approaches to problem solving at every level of the business. Dale is responsible for the overall management of the company.

Ian Bolger – Client Liaison Manager
Ian has had over 27 year’s experience in collection and recovery services. Following a successful career in debt recovery in one of the major banks, Ian joined Shield Mercantile as the Client Liaison Manager where he is responsible for servicing current clients and sourcing and developing new business opportunities. Ian also in conjunction with the Compliance Manager oversees the compliance area. Ian brings strong sense of integrity to get the job done "the right way" and is our primary Client Liaison contact.

Deborah Roddom – Operations Manager
Deborah has extensive experience in the areas of debt collection and administration having formerly worked for Finance Companies and many years for a major bank. Deborah is responsible for the operations of Shield Mercantile and is actively involved in the future progression of the business, with over 36 years experience she provides profusion of knowledge.

David Wadick – National Collections Manager
David has over 22 years of experience in debt collection and as our National Collection Manager David oversees all aspects of Collection. David is responsible for ensuring effective performance and is charged with getting the best out of our people to ensure maximum returns for our clients.

Shield Mercantile was established in 1988 as a privately owned debt collection firm which now hosts offices located throughout Australia. Through strong leadership, vision and diligence, we have created a unique position within the market as one of the best performing primary and secondary agencies.

Our approach
Shield Mercantile does not operate a volume driven process like many of its market competitors. Our approach to providing debt collection services is firmly underpinned by a quality process that produces consistently higher net returns to our clients. Our ability to handle volume is facilitated by our decentralised business model.

Our approach to collections is individualised so that we can provide appropriate consideration to the situation and circumstances of each debtor. This approach has been proved to consistently outperform volume processes such as predictive dialers.

Over 70% of our core business comes from contingency portfolio work reflecting stable, long term relationships with our major clients.

Unique collection methodology
Shield Mercantile's unique collection methodology sees each collection officer working their own portfolio of files to their entirety, from skip tracing the debtor to negotiating payment of the debt. We recognise the need to apply a thorough and specialised approach to working delinquent accounts that have already been worked by the banks' internal recoveries teams and possibly other agents. This approach creates both ownership and accountability for results and a consistency in knowledge on the file which in every instance provides our collectors with an opportunity to negotiate with the debtor from a position of strength.

Local knowledge
Our decentralised business model affords our state-based collection teams the benefit of operating with knowledge of regional culture and local legislation, helping to minimise conflict and complaints and greatly assists in locating debtors. We have found the benefit of maintaining good relations with financial counsellors and other customer advocates to be of great benefit as we see an increase in debtors utilising these services more than ever.

Sustainability
We acknowledge that our activities generate an environmental footprint and as such we have recently introduced our Environmental Sustainability Principals to better demonstrate good environmental stewardship and responsibility. Although we are not yet ISO certified we are fully compliant with the standard and are working through an action plan to edge our way closer to being certified.

In the Community

Support of children in remote regional areas, including the Kowanyama State School in Far North Queensland.

Benefit with Shield Mercantile

You can demonstrate internal efficiencies to your directors and shareholders by increasing bottom-line results without increasing departmental overheads.

Quality

As part of our ongoing commitment to excellence we are a Quality Endorsed Company having met the stringent requirements under ISO 9001 (Lic 12503).