Engaging with members

13 February 2025

R3 President Tim Cooper has begun the year meeting members at events in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and will be visiting North West England rounding off the term back in London as part of his presidential duties in the coming weeks…

Having covered much of the UK meeting members in 2024 since my appointment, meeting members in each of the R3 regions, there is still much to do and many members to see in my remaining term in 2025, before handing over to R3 VP Tom Russell at the AGM in April.

2025 began with a shorter commute, a stone's throw for me to The Caledonian in the heart of Edinburgh for the R3 Scotland’s Burns Supper. This event is a personal favourite, reconnecting with Scottish insolvency and restructuring professionals while marking the Immortal Memory of Scotland’s most famous poet (delivered beautifully by ICAS President, Bruce Cartwright).

With toasts and tales of the community by Jamie Lindsay of Breadalbane Finance and Emily Muir of SIA Group, it was a supper for Burns to be proud of. Thank you and well done to those from R3 in Scotland who organised it and all of our fantastic sponsors.

Lessons from the past to inform the future

It was straight from the celebration of Burns, to the serious matter of the future of our profession.  Who better to inform R3 that our Past Presidents, gaining precious insights and guidance from them at a roundtable at Addleshaw Goddard's offices in London.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that our skills are going to be in further demand this year, and it is critical to the future of the profession that R3 leads and guides on how we  adapt to these demands and the future challenges coming our way, for example:

• Businesses are beginning to count the cost due to changes in employer NIC rates and an increase in the National Minimum Wage, with more to come from the Employment Rights Bill;
• Creditors are more willing to resort to court action to resolve unpaid debts, and to challenge office holders on their duties and conduct of cases;
• The advent of firmwide regulation coupled with practitioner regulation;
• Continued debate over the issue of a single regulator and proposals for a compensation scheme, in the context of the Audit Reform and Governance Authority (ARGA) Bill;
• Quality, standards and education in a shifting landscape where our skills are deployed to an ever-increasing scope of work.

One only need look at the changing make up of Scotland’s insolvency landscape over the last quarter, with more solvent businesses entering an insolvency process and compulsory liquidation numbers rising, to see that 2025 and beyond will be a much different period to what has come before.

Members were telling me enquiries were up between November and December as businesses looked to explore their restructuring and insolvency options ahead of the New Year, and it’s looking like this is set to continue in the second month of Q1 2025.  

Against this backdrop, I put great store in the Past Presidents' roundtable to help set the agenda for the future. It was clear to everyone around the table just how far R3 has come since our last strategy was launched in 2019 – and how R3 has evolved into a more modern, innovative organisation since the pandemic.

While the shape of the 2025-30 strategy is still to be determined, it was very clear from our Past Presidents' engagement that the issues which have loomed large over many years including during my year are likely to continue to be top of the agenda for Tom, Sonia and other Presidents over the next five years. As well as the issues highlighted above, the issue of the role of the Insolvency Service and its interaction with the private sector profession is a pervading issue for R3 to grapple with.

Belfast Bound

So, it is back on the road (or flight paths, to borrow from the St Andrews conference theme), this month with a visit to Belfast for R3’s Northern Ireland Half Day Forum. I've been looking forward, for a long time, to engaging with the profession in Northern Ireland: it is a country that completes the landscape of R3's UK membership, and has historically always been a strong voice on Council.

As Regional Communications Committee Chair I have been especially pleased, working with R3 NI Chair Ian Leonard of Interpath Advisory, to see the NI Committee bring R3 back to the forefront of the NI market again since Covid restrictions, so this is perhaps one of the most important of the Presidential visits to the R3 regions and nations so far.

Given the importance I placed on New Professional engagement when I became President last year, I am particularly interested in the session on entry routes into restructuring. Peter Hales’s session on running a hotel in administration also looks insightful, and explores a sector I think more of our members may experience activity in over the next year. 

Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

R3 has made great strides forward in promoting and encouraging a fully diverse community of professionals in our membership.  The corporate governance and membership projects have been an ongoing body of work, vital to help achieve R3's goals in EDI, and which culminated in the changes to our articles and membership structure in November 2024.  These changes are aimed at ensuring that our organisation is open and accessible, and supportive of all ranges of skills, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives that should reflect the modern and dynamic community of interests we have working around restructuring and insolvency, and that we wish to become.

Whilst this work is by no means 'done', I have seen and heard first hand from all of my visits to all regions of the UK so far, much tangible progress is being made.

So, I look forward to my final regional visit in early March at the R3 North West Region's International Women's Day event, when I hope to showcase a little more of R3's work promoting DEI in our profession, and hear views from our members in that area.

International conference

I can't deny my excitement for my next milestone event: INSOL International’s conference in Hong Kong. When I attended last year, it was clear to me that R3 and our UK membership is an important and respected voice on the global insolvency and restructuring stage. R3 is the largest member association of INSOL International, and so attending this event R3 is best able to represent the UK’s profession and take in the global debate on the key issues and challenges shaping our work at an international level. I am looking forward to learning more – and feeding back to members - about how the evolution in the African, Asian and global economies might affect and shape our profession.  

There is a full day's roundtable meeting of all the INSOL International Member Associations, in which our R3 CEO Caroline Sumner has played a leading role in shaping the agenda.  It is a rare opportunity to hear from our colleagues across the world and learn how the challenges and opportunities they have experienced and face in their areas compare to our own. I will be paying particular attention to our counterparts in China, given the geo-political events of the last few months, if not weeks!

Parliamentary engagement

One of my final acts as R3 President will be to host the President’s Lunch – R3’s flagship public affairs event – in Westminster at the end of March. The timing could not be better, as we will be equipped with the learnings from:

• other countries' experiences and approaches at the Hong Kong conference;
• the insights of the Past Presidents;
• R3 Council's deliberations on key strategy issues for 2025-2030.

At the time I was writing this, we had received confirmation that Justin Madders MP, the minister with responsibility for insolvency, hoped to attend this event.

If parliamentary business does not mean his plans change, I will be making the most of the opportunity to hear the Minister’s views and intentions around a number of the areas of policy I mentioned above, and to relay members’ concerns to him (and the other parliamentarians in attendance) about these and a number of other key issues. What a great way to end my year in office!

Looking forward

It is going to be a(nother) busy couple of months, and I look forward to updating you on how they have gone in the next edition of this newsletter – my final appearance in an R3 publication as President before I hand over to Tom Russell at the end of April.