Arum (Trusted for over 25 years across the globe to improve collections and recoveries) and Just (Helping clients to deliver better debt outcomes) are proud to present our podcast: Credit Where Credit’s Due.
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In this special end of season episode, Steve has a cross industry discussion with three podcasters – a financial wellbeing mentor, a CEO in the third sector and the founder of a debt technology firm. They discuss the themes that have emerged from their respective podcasts, what that says about the state of the nation, some practical steps that we can all take to make improvements, and their predictions for the year ahead.
Steve Coppard meets with Katherine Francis-Browne, the Income Delivery Lead at NHS England. As the NHS is free at the point of use, debt is not the first thing that comes to mind, however any organisation dealing with any financial transactions has the capacity to create debt. Their conversation highlights the improvements the NHS is making to responsibly collect debt, identifying vulnerabilities and the need for better technology and data.
In this episode, Steve Coppard speaks to Deven Ghelani from Policy in Practice, a social policy, software and analytics company supporting businesses and local authorities to better analyse the impact of policy and those affected. Their recently published research found there is £19bn worth of unclaimed benefits every year in the UK. Steve and Deven discuss how Policy in Practice is trying to move the needle on the issue, why the issue exists and why those working in the financial services and collections and recoveries industries should care.
For our latest episode, Steve visits Lex Jones and Chris Dick at the Registry Trust. The Registry Trust was established to maintain the official statutory, register of judgements, orders and fines for England and Wales on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, and it maintains similar registers for Scotland. Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man, and Jersey by agreement with the relevant authorities there. Through campaigning by the Registry Trust, Steve became aware of an issue relating to a lack of claimant data for England and Wales - the name of the person or organisation that files the county court judgement (CCJ) against the indebted person or business. Currently their name does not have to appear on the CCJ, so the database is incomplete, leading to difficulty in paying down CCJs, added stress, and a high volume of unnecessary calls to both the courts and the Registry Trust. That campaign led to a commitment by the Ministry of Justice to run a public consultation on this matter, which in government terms is the first step to making a change - so a huge win for the Registry Trust!
For this episode, Steve speaks with Mark Francis from DebtManagers in New Zealand. Mark is one of the leading voices in the debt conversation in New Zealand, pressing for better treatment of those in debt, and an industry code of practice amongst other things. Steve took the opportunity to ask Mark what it is about the industry that keeps him awake at night and he spoke about the four issues that he's concerned about – the lack of a code of practice, the language used around debt, encouraging people to access free debt advice through Money Mentors, and personal responsibility regarding debt.