Changes to IPA membership criteria
Other articles (Insolvency Practitioner, February 2021):
- Michelle Thorp, CEO
- Kevin Hellard, President
- Important reminder: Extraordinary General Meeting
- IPA Annual Conference
- New Joint Insolvency Committee role for the IPA
- Renewals
- ICO Data Sharing Code
- A reminder for members who deal with IVAs
- Business continuity and support
- Debt Relief Orders consultation
- Proposed FCA guidance for Insolvency Practitioners: How to approach FCA-regulated firms
- Insolvency Service guidance on monitoring Insolvency Practitioners: advertisements, marketing and debt advice
- Vacancy for a Disciplinary Chair of the Disciplinary and Appeals Committee
- Vacancy for a Head of External Affairs and Business Development
- Update: HMRC Enforcement and Insolvency Services phone lines
- IPA rules review
With the rise in corporate insolvencies and projected increase in personal insolvencies, we have recently evaluated the criteria to become an Individual (previously Ordinary) member or an Affiliate member with the IPA. Ways in which the criteria could reasonably be widened so as to make insolvency knowledge and the IPA’s services and benefits more accessible were assessed. Following this, the criteria for both of these membership categories has been updated.
The main changes are that we have removed the need for a certain amount of experience in some cases, and in other cases we have simplified the amount of experience required. We have removed the need for two sponsors, replacing this with one referee. For Individual membership, we have added ‘a significant contribution to the knowledge and practice of insolvency’ as a criterion to widen the scope. In the case of Affiliate membership, the aforementioned ‘significant contribution’ was already part of the criteria, but this criterion has been widened, by way of removing the need for the contribution to be significant.
For full information, click here for the new Individual membership criteria and here for the Affiliate membership criteria.
Similarly, we are planning to very carefully change our criteria for insolvency licences later this year, to make becoming an IP as accessible as possible – provided of course that prospective IPs have the requisite skills and experience. We will update members with the outcome when this work concludes.