Corporate report

Review of the monitoring and regulation of insolvency practitioners

The Insolvency Service has undertaken a number of reviews to assess the effectiveness of the regulatory regime.

Documents

Monitoring and Regulation of IPs Report

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Details

Following the introduction of “Regulatory Objectives” for Recognised Professional Bodies (RPBs) in October 2015, the Insolvency Service has undertaken a number of reviews to assess the effectiveness of the regulatory regime. As part of that we have visited each RPB to assess how they carry out their monitoring and regulatory functions and have also undertaken a themed review on how insolvency practitioners (IPs) working at volume Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) providers are regulated.

Volume providers are those firms which typically oversee a large number of IVAs, with employee IPs as supervisors, and with IVAs representing the majority or sole source of business. For monitoring purposes they are described as as any firm that controls greater than 2% of the total market (including new and existing cases), or greater than 2% of new cases over a rolling three month period.

This paper represents a summary of findings to date. We will be continuing our oversight activities in the coming months, as we move towards making a decision on whether to introduce a single regulator, as provided for in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015.

Published 26 September 2018
Last updated 1 February 2019 + show all updates
  1. We have updated our report originally published in September 2018 to confirm the period during which evidence was gathered throughout the review.

  2. First published.