Kevin Hellard, President

Other articles (Insolvency Practitioner, June 2020):

Hi everyone. It is my great pleasure to serve as IPA President 2020/21 and write this, my first President’s newsletter article.

I hope that you and your families are all keeping safe and well in these unprecedented times and that the updates we have been sending out, and the information on the IPA website, have been useful.

To give some background on myself to those who don’t know me, I am the Practice Leader of the Insolvency and Asset Recovery practice at Grant Thornton. I’ve enjoyed nearly 30 years of working within insolvency, with the last 20 focusing on contentious insolvency. Aside from leading the UK and offshore practice, I specialise in investigatory cases which can involve asset tracing often across multiple jurisdictions, including the principal offshore territories, the Middle East, Far East, South America and eastern Europe. Accordingly, in more usual times I travel extensively and I am very fortunate to have experienced insolvency regimes in many different parts of the world.

I have been a Board member of the IPA for nearly 7 years. I welcome the opportunity to serve as the IPA President and I hope to continue the good work of my predecessors.

IPA 2020/21

Looking to the year ahead, I’m excited to be taking the reins and picking up where Carrie left off, as the IPA continues its development from the programme of change that was initiated in early 2019, which streamlined our regulatory functions and modernised processes.

We also recently enhanced the IPA website with a new database and improved user interactivity, which should make for a more seamless experience for all members. Do get in touch with us if you have any feedback.

I look forward to the continuation of our Volume Provider Regulation Scheme and to the next benchmark report on the Scheme, following the first report that was issued in February. You can view this via our news and notifications page here. Whilst it takes time for concrete results to be realised, the Scheme has produced promising results so far.

I also anticipate an interesting set of virtual IPA Roadshows this year. We will keep an eye on the Covid-19 response situation and, if viable, we may consider physical attendance, but at the moment we are proceeding with the plan of holding them virtually. We will of course get in touch in good time if there is any change. Click here to view our events calendar.

Charity of the Year 2020/21 – Crisis

Taking forward this initiative, which Carrie James introduced last year, I have selected Crisis as our Charity of the Year. I look forward to another great year of fundraising by IPA personnel and encourage all members to get involved in any way you can. More details on our plans to follow!

Crisis is a homelessness charity (homelessness of course being such a prevalent issue in today’s society) and was established in 1967. Crisis is producing a plan to end the issue of homelessness once and for all, as well as carrying out leading research, campaigning for change, providing education and training to the homeless, as well as supporting with housing, employment and health matters. Crisis does all of this with the goal of getting people out of homelessness for good. You can find out more about Crisis here.

That’s all from me for this month’s issue. I will look forward to next month and updating you on how my Presidential year has developed.

Kevin Hellard, President

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