A HELPING HAND
THE CCTA ADVICE LINE FOR MEMBERS

CCTA

As many of you know, I am the Head of Policy and Advice at the CCTA and much of my role entails support and guidance for our members. The publication of our magazine gives me the opportunity to update you all on key developments, not only within my role but across the CCTA as your trade association.

I have previously talked about training and development and, whilst this has been progressing in the background, we aim to provide further details of the launch of CCTA Academy at our Annual Conference in September.

However, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about another one of our key services – Advice Line. The Advice Line service is key tool as it allows members to utilise CCTA knowledge and experience of all matters that affect our sector. We recommend members to use CCTA as a sounding board on a wide variety of topics and subjects. Part of my role is to manage the Advice Line service and, based on your feedback, I know that this is a very valuable service to many of you.

For the benefit of new members and those that have not yet used the service, Advice Line is free and only available to members. It can be used to ask for CCTA views, support or guidance on any issues or topics affecting members. This can include business specific matters such as internal policies and procedures, as well as regulatory, legislative and economic matters. Accessed through our Member Hub, members can put forward any questions, comments or concerns and we look to provide the appropriate support and guidance where possible.

To provide some context, in 2022, we received 59 requests from our members for support or guidance. These requests included questions, queries or concerns in relation to a range of matters including CMCs, affordability, Consumer Duty, agreements, FCA Handbooks, the Consumer Credit Act and member-specific business questions i.e. policies, procedures and processes. Prior to 2022, CCTA were able to provide the requested support or guidance within four or five days. For 2022, we set a timeframe of a three day response time. I am happy to announce that we were able to respond to 98% of requests within three days last year.

Given the positive feedback on prompt responses, we maintained a target timeframe for responses of three days for 2023. We also improved on the level of insight and detail provided in our responses which members have found very useful. This has had a significant positive impact on the use of our Advice Line service. For the first six months of 2023, we have already received 46 requests for support. Again, these have been in relation to a wide variety of matters and topical issues. Of course, some matters are more complex and ongoing than others but, I am pleased to confirm that we have managed to provide an initial response within three days to 100% of these requests.

We are here to support you, as and when needed, so if you have any questions, issues or concerns, please feel free to reach out via our Advice Line and we will be happy to assist. Whilst the support we provide does not constitute formal legal or compliance advice, we can certainly provide thorough guidance using our knowledge and experience of all matters affecting our industry.

Finally, I wanted to finish off with a request for input and thoughts from our members. Our Advice Line service provides a useful sounding board for members, but we are aware that, from time to time, you will require formal legal or compliance assistance for certain business matters. We recognise that sourcing this support can often be time consuming. That being the case, CCTA have considered introducing an extension to the Advice
Line service whereby members can raise a request, compare legal and compliance experts and prices and source the best provider (possibly at discounted rates or on preferential terms).

We think members will find this service beneficial. However, as ever, we will be informed by our members. It would be great to hear your initial thoughts and inputs on this new service. Would you find it useful? Do you have any further ideas on how to make this more beneficial? I would love to hear your thoughts and you can send these across to me via email at naveed.asif@ccta.co.uk.

Thank you to all our valued members and associates and I look forward to meeting many of you at our upcoming conference at Radisson Blu Manchester Airport in September.