The Insolvency Service carried out reviews between November 2016 and November 2017 on the five recognised professional bodies (RPBs), to assess the effectiveness of the regulatory regime.

Visiting each RPB to assess how they carry out their monitoring and regulatory functions, a themed review on how insolvency practitioners (IPs) working at volume individual voluntary arrangement (IVA) providers are regulated also took place.

Volume providers are firms that typically oversee a large number of IVAs, with employee IPs as supervisors, and with IVAs representing the majority or sole source of business.

Key findings from the reviews are that:

• All RPBs have appropriate procedures in place when risk assessing and carrying out monitoring visits.
• Monitoring visits to IPs are generally carried out effectively and robustly.
• Whilst monitoring visits were effective in identifying and reporting concerns, there were examples where regulatory and/or disciplinary outcomes were not being achieved in the expected way.
• All RPBs have procedures in place to separate membership functions from regulatory activities.
• Transparency in the publication of disciplinary outcomes could be improved and work is ongoing with the RPBs in this regard.
• There are significant concerns about how IPs at volume IVA firms operate and are regulated.

Read the full report: Review of the monitoring and regulation of insolvency practitioners [pdf]

See also

Improving outcomes in IVAs