CM December DECEMBER 2018

EDITOR’S COLUMN
Overcoming a
herd mentality
Sean Feast FCICM
Managing Editor
I
love elephants. Did you know that
an elephant cannot run uphill,
spends up to 18 hours a day eating,
and as a result can generate about
a tonne of manure every week?
The biggest elephants can grow up
to three metres tall and weigh an incredible
7,500kg, making them the world’s largest
land mammal. These guys are big, so big
that if one wandered into the room, I think
you’d notice. Which makes me wonder why
it took so long for the debt advice sector to
spot such a little fella.
The elephant I am referring to in this
case is, of course, the issue of funding.
For some time now, there have been
mumblings off stage from certain creditors
and the collections industry as to the
efficiency of the debt advice sector, and
specifically those firms (both charitable
and otherwise) that benefit from the Fair
Share payments. Peter Wyman too, in his
recent report, made specific mention of the
need for the debt advice sector to achieve
greater efficiencies, and to do so quickly.
Whether Fair Share is ‘fair’ or not, or is
paid by those creditors who truly benefit,
is a separate debate; what those current
contributors want to know, is whether their
contributions are being spent delivering
front-line services, or being lost in an evergrowing
overhead of people and property.
The creditors’ argument is that debt
advisors fundamentally deliver the same
‘product’, and why do we need three or four
major players all doing the same thing? The
debt advisors, on the other hand, argue
with some justification that their services
are different, and complementary rather
than competitive.
Now sadly I can’t tell you StepChange’s
position (my entreaties unfortunately
went unanswered so I assume they must
be busy), but of those organisations that
did respond, it’s clear that future funding
is a major concern, and everyone has a
view on what this could look like. Reading
between the lines, they also seem very
aware of the need to justify why separate
organisations are preferred to one larger,
single entity, as has happened in other
sectors.
For the avoidance of any doubt, I am
not knocking the work that debt advisors
do in what are clearly very difficult and
challenging circumstances. (I have a
friend who probably owes his life to the
support he received from one debt advisor
in particular – ironically the one who
wouldn’t come back to me.) And demand
for their services, as we know, is only
going to increase.
But as I have learned from personal
experience, charities who work in similar
areas tend to jealously guard their right to
be there (think of The British Legion versus
Help for Heroes), and that is not always
in their beneficiaries’ best interests. Ego
can do funny things to people. What I also
know is that there are only so many times
that the pitcher can go to the well, and the
more pitchers there are, the more quickly
that well will dry up.
The elephant I am
referring to in this case
is, of course, the issue of
funding.
The Recognised Standard / www.cicm.com / December 2018 / PAGE 4