Protecting the consumer

I have spent all morning working out how to drop this line into my latest blog... 'This month, we won our 2nd industry award inside six months.'

Lee Schofield
3rd May 2013
Blogs
So, now that’s sorted; on with the blog!

I was reading what I wrote in May last year, about planning ahead and how unsuccessful my team Sheffield United were.  Almost 12 months on and United are still rubbish and planning ahead is something Ashley Park have been doing a lot of lately.

The Debt Management Protocol was announced in February. For well over a year now we have been putting processes in place to ensure that we would be prepared for this announcement; amongst others, a focus on even better training and development started last April (with the recruitment of Christian McCarten our full time training and development manager), communication lines with creditors were opened and relationships are being developed.

Whilst some corners of the media see the protocol as a means to control fee-charging debt management companies I think its important to point out that it will also improve the practices of creditors.

For example, on receipt of evidence that a client is engaged with a DMP provider to provide a protocol compliant plan, creditors should extend a breathing space of 30 days (possible to extend where demonstrable progress is being made but not yet complete) and this will include suspension of all collections activity relating to debts under the DMP.  The number one priority of the protocol has to be to protect the consumer and that requires DMP providers, creditors, collectors and credit reference agencies to work together.

The debt management industry has been a rapidly changing landscape and it is still moving but one thing is for sure - it is moving in the right direction!
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