Steve Coppard meets with Katherine Francis-Browne, the Income Delivery Lead at NHS England. As the NHS is free at the point of use, debt is not the first thing that comes to mind, however any organisation dealing with any financial transactions has the capacity to create debt.

Their conversation highlights the improvements the NHS is making to responsibly collect debt, identifying vulnerabilities and the need for better technology and data.

In this episode, Steve Coppard speaks to Deven Ghelani from Policy in Practice, a social policy, software and analytics company supporting businesses and local authorities to better analyse the impact of policy and those affected. Their recently published research found there is £19bn worth of unclaimed benefits every year in the UK.

Steve and Deven discuss how Policy in Practice is trying to move the needle on the issue, why the issue exists and why those working in the financial services and collections and recoveries industries should care.

For our latest episode, Steve visits Lex Jones and Chris Dick at the Registry Trust. The Registry Trust was established to maintain the official statutory, register of judgements, orders and fines for England and Wales on behalf of the Ministry of Justice, and it maintains similar registers for Scotland. Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man, and Jersey by agreement with the relevant authorities there.

Through campaigning by the Registry Trust, Steve became aware of an issue relating to a lack of claimant data for England and Wales - the name of the person or organisation that files the county court judgement (CCJ) against the indebted person or business. Currently their name does not have to appear on the CCJ, so the database is incomplete, leading to difficulty in paying down CCJs, added stress, and a high volume of unnecessary calls to both the courts and the Registry Trust.

That campaign led to a commitment by the Ministry of Justice to run a public consultation on this matter, which in government terms is the first step to making a change - so a huge win for the Registry Trust!

For this episode, Steve speaks with Mark Francis from DebtManagers in New Zealand. Mark is one of the leading voices in the debt conversation in New Zealand, pressing for better treatment of those in debt, and an industry code of practice amongst other things.

Steve took the opportunity to ask Mark what it is about the industry that keeps him awake at night and he spoke about the four issues that he's concerned about – the lack of a code of practice, the language used around debt, encouraging people to access free debt advice through Money Mentors, and personal responsibility regarding debt.

In this episode Steve meets with Jamie Waller, founder of JBW Group and the Enterprise Network at the Prince's Trust. Jamie’s the author of Unsexy Business and at a time of recording, he was in the midst of writing his new book, The Dyslexic Entrepreneur.

They discussed the enforcement industry, past then present. Their conversation highlighted the importance of making sure that the industry hears the voice of the front line, the enforcement agents themselves, as well as challenges in the procurement process, and the potential impact of the Enforcement Conduct Board.

In our fourth episode, Steve meets with Muna Yassin MBE from Rooted Finance, a specialist money and debt advice charity.

Muna shares some interesting statistics and highlights the severity of the ethnicity premium. Their discussion raises the need for greater accuracy in data and further research into how ethnicity can affect the cost of necessities, such as insurance. Even more so as the last census showed that about 1 in 5 people in England and Wales are from a black, asian, mixed or other non-white backgrounds. Under the consumer duty, deepening our knowledge of diverse ethnic communities will be critical to achieving good customer outcomes.

Further to this, collaboration between specialist advice agencies, financial institutions, collections and recoveries and the regulators could lead to lower costs and better debt outcomes for all.

Steve Coppard meets with Andrew Hignett, credit control manager at Johnson Tiles, in the Potteries’ heartland of Stoke-on-Trent. Established in 1901, Johnson Tiles is the UK's only large-scale manufacturer of ceramic tiles.

They discuss the overlap and similarities in business and personal debt, both involve people, their behaviours, attitudes, and biases. As business debt is managed by people it is possible to handle both similarly as people can choose to manage their business finances just as they manage their personal finances.

The conversation also raises questions such as – What can be done to help people manage better personally and professionally? How can we educate people about money and debt? Should payment terms be standardised further? How can businesses use Know Your Customer to help deal with their debtors?

In this episode, Steve meets with Cath Wohlers from the Illegal Money Lending Team to talk about the nation’s efforts to Stop Loan Sharks.

Coincidently in the week just before Mantas Daujotas is sentenced to four and a half years in prison for having illegally lent about £2m, making a profit of £450k.

This is a complex topic that lives in the grey area of where we draw the line on sub-prime lending. On the one hand, Jason Wassell, Chief Exec of the Consumer Credit Trade Association argues that shrinking the market leads to financial exclusion, while Mick McAteer of the Financial Inclusion Centre takes the view that improved regulation has protected people from unaffordable products.

Also around this time, Fair4All Finance publishes a report into loan sharks and is looking to convene cross-sector, cross-party support to create a credit market that supports everyone, presumably to fill the gap between Jason & Mick’s viewpoints. Free training is available from the Illegal Money lending team, just call 0300 555 22 22 and ask for Cath or go to stoploansharks.co.uk and use the live chat.

In our premiere episode, Steve Coppard speaks with Ben Perkins, Head of Partnerships at Plain Numbers to discuss the UK's numeracy levels and the role companies play in supporting and communicating with their customers.

Numeracy was identified by the FCA as one of the risk factors for consumers of financial services that should be addressed in attempts to recognise consumer vulnerability.

In fact, nearly half of the working-age population in the UK has the expected numeracy level of a primary school child. The FCA also found that 34% of adults in the UK have poor - to - low levels of numeracy involving financial concepts.

With Consumer Duty placing an onus on firms to communicate information as simply as possible – what can be done to ensure customers can understand financial concepts and communicate with numbers confidently?