In Focus Consumer Credit


it into the virtual environment. So that gave us confidence to build it out to be a complete solution, which we could take to market.


CCR:What has been the thinking of the third-sector organisations? JW: Again, it was really important to us that we did not build a solution in isolation, and it was crucial that we did not build one that, when it was launched, came under deep criticism. So what we wanted to do was to build a solution that had already taken into account everybody’s thoughts and opinions. Of course, we can never build a solution


which will be absolutely right for the debt- advice sector, because that would probably be simply to stop all enforcement, but what we can do is to engage with them early, so we engaged with pretty much all the senior people within the advice sector immediately after getting the green light from the Royal Courts of Justice. We took some of their feedback on board and it helped to develop a solution, which we believe is now widely supported and fit for the future.


CCR: Has there been any pushback? JW: As you can, no doubt, imagine, there has been. We launched the solution officially last month and many people support it, but some of the more traditional suppliers do not. They have written to a lot of creditors across the UK saying that we cannot do this, but the reality is that the Senior Master of the Royal Courts of Justice has said to us that she cannot see anything in the legislation that prevents virtual enforcement. Citizens Advice have come out and said that any solutions that gives us the opportunity to engage with the enforcement agents, not at the door, is a good thing. StepChange have come out and said that the intent of reducing the number of enforcement visits, reducing fees, an having a hand-off process to the third- sector is an improvement. Even more importantly, the All-Party


Parliamentary Group for Debt has said that it is vital that we support those in debt, particularly at this difficult time, and the new virtual enforcement tool by Just is clearly a step in the right direction. And then, if you take all those statements


and join them on to all of the stakeholders we have been in communication over the past


August 2019


weeks, when I see the traditional agencies writing letters saying that virtual enforcement cannot be done, they must think that we created this last weekend! This has been a 14 week solution which has been developed with a large number of key stakeholders.


CCR: So you are taking on the feedback and moving forward? JW: Very much so. If we built a solution in isolation from stakeholders who are effected by it, then that would just not work. Say we launched the solution a week ago and government came out five days later, or even 50 days later, and said ‘that is illegal’, that would be a huge amount of egg on our faces. Equally if we launched the solution


Even more importantly, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Debt has said that it is vital that we support those in debt, particularly at this difficult time, and the new virtual enforcement tool by Just is clearly a step in the right direction


The reality is that those in the industry


who have built their businesses based on late-stage fees are never going to be happy with this, because it takes money directly out of their pockets, gives it back to the debtor and gets the principle amount paid to the creditor sooner.


www.CCRMagazine.com


and today we had all of the debt-advice agencies condemning it, that would also be embarrassing. The only stakeholder group, which we did not engage with, was the one that we knew would give us the most resistance for the wrong reasons, and that was the traditional enforcement agencies. Their businesses are based on late-stage payment models where they require people to pay heavier fees to support their infrastructure. Our business is just not designed that way:


we are a technology business, we are driven by data, analytics, reduced costs to debtors, and quicker returns to creditors; we will take a small sliver in between and, ultimately, with scale, we will become profitable. CCR


This article is edited from an interview between Jamie Waller and Stephen Kiely, editor of CCRMagazine.


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