PPP update: February 2023

08 March 2023

For such a short month, R3’s Press, Policy and Public Affairs team packed lots of activity into February, with a trip to the House of Commons for the launch of a new report, ongoing planning for R3’s Presidents Lunch and continued interest from the media on business and insolvency trends.

Building political capital for our members

Plans for PPP’s flagship event, the President’s Lunch, were in full swing last month, ahead of the event taking place on the 20^th March.

The Lunch is an opportunity to build relationships with parliamentarians, help improve understanding of the insolvency profession and its work and correct certain misconceptions about the profession.

We are looking forward to seeing all members who will be attending, as well as hearing from Ben Chu, our keynote speaker. 

Discussing policy

Last month, the PPP team held its quarterly Policy Group meeting, to discuss trending policy topics and understand different viewpoints from the profession.

This time, members discussed insolvency and crypto assets, following the Government’s commitment to introducing a new regulatory regime for crypto assets reflecting the risks and opportunities they present.

Amid an in-depth discussion on the economic outlook and what it means for the profession, we also considered what members would like to see regarding custody of crypto assets and the distribution of assets to investors during an insolvency process, and a range of other questions.

In addition to this, the meeting explored advancing ESG standards across the restructuring and insolvency profession, the state of the economy following a rise in insolvencies in England and Wales, as well as the High Street and how Government can best support high-street businesses to enable their survival.

A trip to the Commons

Towards the end of the month, some of the PPP team visited the House of Commons for the launch of a new report from the APPG on Fair Business Banking.

With compensation schemes making the headlines in recent years, it’s clear there is no shared understanding of what a good and fair compensation should look like.

The new report, ‘Building a Framework for Compensation and Redress’ seeks to answer exactly what good compensation should involve, analyses a range of existing schemes to understand what lessons can be learned, and outlines how future schemes can be established quickly and fairly.

The event was a fantastic opportunity to understand the current compensation framework, and to meet face-to-face with stakeholders and MPs. 

Department and Ministerial changes

In February the PM announced a number of Departmental changes. BEIS, the sponsoring Department to The Insolvency Service, has been broken into two separate departments: The Department for Business and Trade, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

The former will house the Minister of State who will pick up insolvency matters within their portfolio. Who this will be is yet to be formally confirmed, but it seems highly likely that Kevin Hollinrake will pick up this portfolio, and will be calling for a meeting with him at the earliest possible opportunity. 

Agents for change on the Diversity and Inclusion agenda

Our Head of External Affairs was invited to join an expert panel at a well-attended half-day conference on promoting diversity and inclusion in the insolvency and restructuring profession.

The event, led by the IPA and hosted by R3, looked at examples of how the profession is positively promoting inclusion and considered future research on identifying artificial barriers to entry and how these barriers can be removed.

R3 has an important role to play on collecting data and sharing best practice across the profession so there will be more work to follow on this topic through the course of 2023.

R3 in the media

Our comments on the quarterly and monthly insolvency statistics generated a range of coverage throughout the month, with Christina Fitzgerald’s thoughts on the January statistics for England and Wales quoted in City A.M, the Times, and a range of trade and regional publications.

Media interest in R3’s analysis of business trends data also remained popular in February, with stories highlighting a rise in business start-ups in the South West and Wales receiving pick up in Business Live and Business News Wales and news of a drop in insolvency-related activity in the Yorkshire region featuring in a range of publications including Yorkshire Post, Telegraph & Argus and Business Up North.