Home » Services » Regulated Debts » Regulation and Compliance

Regulation and Compliance

Rachel Addai

Equity Partner - Solicitor

Credit Solutions Litigation

raddai@judge-priestley.co.uk

Wide ranging sector expertise

Regulated by the SRA & FCA

Staff trained in affordability and vulnerability issue

Debt recovery in the financial sector regularly falls under the media spotlight, often for malpractice, and the industry has rightly become subject to increasingly complex regulatory regimes as a result.

We take our responsibilities for compliance with relevant laws and regulations extremely seriously. As previously noted, we are jointly authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). We voluntarily took on this joint regulation regime to indicate our commitment to applying the best practice to our operations in regard to both personal and commercial debt recovery.

To oversee this commitment, the firm has a separate Compliance Team which operates distinctly from the functional operational debt recovery teams.

The Compliance team includes:

Steve Taylor – COLP and Managing Partner
Robert Davis – Equity Partner and Head of Compliance
Carmen Abela – Compliance Manager and Data Protection Officer

These senior managers have a support team that includes among others a Compliance Officer and a Quality Assurance Manager. The team provide oversight and guidance and ensures our processes and operations take place in a manner which is compliant with all of our regulatory obligations.

Beyond safeguarding compliance, the team also Manage complaint handling – both third party and customer/debtor complaint management.

GDPR

J&P takes its responsibilities under the UK GDPR extremely seriously given the confidential client data we hold.

All staff undergo rigorous GDPR training as part of their onboarding training and must pass a comprehensive test of their knowledge of GDPR before they commence working on client files. All staff must review this training annually and again pass the test every year.

Our Case Management System (CMS) securely restricts access to client data only to those staff working on the matter/account. Access to data can be controlled to individual users in both our and the client side team and a full real-time audit of all activity/documentation associated with a matter is available for management review. Processing consents for clients are also recorded/manged via the CMS.

Our IT systems have been awarded the ISO27001 and Cyber Essentials Plus accreditations for data security. These accreditations are externally awarded and subject to regular auditing/testing. We also have comprehensive Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans which are tested under different scenarios annually.

We have a dedicated Data Protection Officer, , who monitors GDPR compliance and handles all queries regarding the rights of data subjects.

Our policies and procedures with regard to the processing and storage of data under the UKGDPR are laid out in our Privacy Policy which is publicly available from our website or on request. The policy clearly outlines; the data we collect, where it comes from, the lawful basis for processing data, how we may use/share it and how long we will retain it. It also clearly outlines the client’s rights regarding their data that we hold

Vulnerability and affordability

Given the recent history of the Covid pandemic and the “Cost of Living Crisis” the issues of vulnerability and affordability have never been more in the spotlight for those managing debt recovery matters.

All of our team members receive comprehensive training both when joining the firm and annually on customer vulnerability and affordability issues. The training is aimed at ensuring our team members obtain a clear understanding of what it means to be vulnerable and are provided the tools to be able to clearly identify a person who is vulnerable.

Team members are trained how to listen, question, and adopt a close attention to detail approach so that flags, indicators, and risk factors are not missed. The training also explains how team members should where appropriate signpost customers for further assistance.

Further as part of our FCA Consumer duty obligations, we are required to consider outcomes and to ensure that particular groups do not face worse outcomes than others. As such this will include an assessment of whether those with identified vulnerabilities achieve worse outcomes than those without. At present we have seen no evidence that this is the case. However, this will be tracked. If we found a trend which suggested there was a disparity of outcome, we would be able to implement measures to mitigate that outcome.

Management of Vulnerable Cases

We will work with you to agree a clear protocol for the management of vulnerable customers. This will include what action should be taken to any ongoing case. Where we obtain consent to flag the vulnerability our team members are required to add a vulnerability flag on the case file. This allows us to accurately report on cases identified as vulnerable along with the high-level nature of the vulnerability.