{"id":11076,"date":"2012-03-28T15:28:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T14:28:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/?p=11076"},"modified":"2020-10-20T11:38:25","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T10:38:25","slug":"dmp-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/dmp-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Debt Management Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has amended its Debt Management Guidance that covers the standards it is expecting from organisations that furnish debt management advice or deliver credit repair services to people. Businesses include organisations or individuals that don’t charge for their assistance or are non-profit seeking, which include charities. The guidance was originally published in 2001 and was updated in 2008 and it sets out the benchmarks for the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

The current version differs from older versions insofar as it provides plenty of examples of \u2018unfair or improper practices\u2019 which if engaged in, could possibly render a business unfit to hold a consumer credit license and thereby not be able to function in the market.

The general theme of the guidance is the importance of businesses to be transparent in order that clients have all the knowledge essential for them to arrive at assured judgements with regards to the most suitable debt solutions for them, given their financial position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Debt<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Firms that fail to keep to the requirements laid down put themselves at risk from enforcement measures by the OFT that could cause the most significant sanction of losing their consumer credit license. Failure to stick to the published standards could be thought of as participating in unfair or improper business practices, whether illegal or not, and could be regarded as evidence leading to formal OFT action. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe OFT highlights three unfair practices which it has cracked down on \nin recent years: sending unsolicited marketing text messages, emails or \nvoicemails; making false or unfounded claims with regards to the status \nof the debt management business, such as operating websites which look \nlike the website of a charity or of a government body and even \nincentivizing debt advice staff to the extent that they may promote \ninappropriate debt management products for personal financial gain.

\n Businesses are also expected to point people in certain situations to \nnot-for-profit advice organisations for further help and to keep robust \nmeasures set up to identify and deal with vulnerable individuals, such \nas people who have mental capacity challenges.

The guidance \nalso encourages borrowers to proactively engage in the debt recovery \noperation by especially communicating appropriately and regularly with \ntheir creditors either directly or through their appointed \nrepresentative. Current and correct information and facts ought to be \nimparted in particular concerning any change in circumstances that could\n be likely to appreciably impact on the ability of the debtor to fulfill\n their repayments.

Marketing, client communication, the \nquality of advice proffered, supply of pre-contract facts, consumer \nagreements, consumer information documents and the nature of the debt \nmanagement program itself are the primary things targeted under the \nheading of Unfair or Improper Business Practices.

The 96 pages \nlong document furthermore lays out the Fitness to Practice standards \nneeded plus the scale and reason for the guidance. It sets out the \nOverarching Principles of Fair Business Practice and the OFT\u2019s approach \nto Regulatory Compliance and Enforcement.

Following last \nyear\u2019s OFT clampdown on dodgy debt management companies, 87 firms \ndeparted the market and it is probable that the upgraded standards \nspelled out in this document will result in a further shakeout in the \nsector, due to the higher cost of compliance. While there could be a \nloss in competition, it is certain that debt management will be a a \ngreat deal more attractive and safe experience for the financially \nburdened individual to avail of. The full document can be seen on or \ndown loaded from the OFT website at www.oft.gov.uk\/\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has amended its Debt Management Guidance that covers the standards it is expecting from organisations that furnish debt management advice or deliver credit repair services to people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debt-management-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11087,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11076\/revisions\/11087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}