IP focus on personal insolvency
Insolvency practitioners will be able to specialise in personal insolvency when training, under a new pilot exam
The exam from the
Insolvency
Practitioners Association comes as the economic crisis fuels demand for
personal insolvency specialists.
About 2,000 insolvency practitioners recently sat the exam, which focuses
only on personal insolvency. It was originally intended to work alongside the
Insolvency Service’s proposed voluntary arrangement practitioner qualification,
which would have separated insolvency licences into corporate and personal
categories.
However, the Insolvency Service withdrew the simplified individual voluntary
arrangements proposals, which were targeted at the UK’s poorest debtors and
included the amended qualification.
The Insolvency Service said another scheme – IVA Protocol – which caps
insolvency fees and was introduced earlier this year, meant there was no need
for a separate SIVA category.
The decision was criticised by IPs who said scrapping the proposed
qualification would make poor consumers rely more on unregulated debt advisers.