According to the report, IPA chief executive Nick Sabin said the move is another step towards better policing of the much-maligned debt management industry, following the IPA’s recent appointment as the body charged with regulating the newly formed Debt Resolution For
Sabin said the proposal, which was made to the DTI, is crucial in managing the huge number of IVA proposals effectively. Upcoming changes to the IVA process will make them quicker, easier and simpler to undertake.
He is also quoted as saying:
‘Limited licensing is in that same spirit. A number of practitioners could think it would devalue the brand, but the growth in personal indebtedness means it has become an industrial process, and I can’t see this reducing in the near future. In the interests of all, we need some specialism.’According to the report, Sabin believes that managers within accounting firms handling vast numbers of IVAs on behalf of an IP would be ideally placed to take the qualification.
‘An IP acts as nominee and supervisor for several hundred debtors, but the tier below them is manager level – some of whom have 20 years of experience as managers. They’re interested in a limited license as they can’t get a full license without corporate work'.
For years, junior staff and managers with lower level entry qualifications have been encouraged to take the Certificate of Proficiency in Insolvency (CPI) exams. According to the R3 careers brochure, the exam is designed for staff for staff working full time in insolvency who 'do not necessarily intend to become licensed insolvency practitioners'.
The brochure says the exam is a basic test of insolvency competence and consists of a single three hour paper but questions on personal insolvency only account for approximately one third of the marks and corporate insolvency about two thirds. It would have taken no great effort from the IPA to introduce a certificate of proficiency in personal insolvency for the managers specialising in this lower prestige work.
There are also no industry-wide recruitment standards which makes achievement of the CPI qualification essential for the personal insolvency managers who currently carry out the work of 'supervising' IVAs on a day to day basis. That could be a first step but using an 'IP-lite' qualification as a relatively quick - five year ? - conversion route to creating hundreds of licensed personal IPs will not address the problem of regulation.
Sabin said that managers in accounting firms handling vast numbers of IVAs would be ideally placed to take the qualification but accounting firms do not handle the work of the IVA factories and most of the problems with the "much-maligned debt management industry" are caused by the initial mis-selling of IVAs, not by the day to day management of the arrangements once they have been sold.
IP-lite might well increase the membership of the IPA and it might also improve the professional standing of personal insolvency managers but it sounds as though Sabin is proposing IP-lite as a solution to a problem that it cannot resolve: the commission based sales advisors who are actually selling IVAs and the already qualified insolvency practitioners who are signing off that process.
See previous posts on IP-lite and The Debt Resolution Forum.
No comments:
Post a Comment