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Over 100 Debt Counsellors Attend Virtual Workshop

During July ABSA hosted over 100 Debt Counsellors online to discuss their portal development and their internal processes.

Automation & More

After a warm welcome and some time spent introducing different members of the team and those attending, the workshop moved into industry updates.

Muhammed Laher gave updates from CIF, comments about the current matter at court between the NCR and PDAs as well as the interesting ‘Scott’ matter (about induplum and debt review).

Next, there was some information about the ABSA debt review portal.

The portal is available to Debt Counsellors (with more being added over time). It gives access to a wide range of functions and information.

For example: Download your full DC book or process debit order cancellations.

At the moment, ABSA also integrate with Finwise, are busy testing integration with Bitech and are discussing integration with Intuitive. This means information can safely be sent, quickly between DCs and the Bank.

Then the discussion shifted to going through the different steps (and ABSA teams) in the process, such as COBs (the documents team), proposals (and a discussion about credit life insurance), counter proposals (and value added products), legal and terminations.

An interesting point which was made was that Debt Counsellors who do not make use of DCRS should not expect ABSA to make similar concessions on pro rata proposals. They deal with them very differently.

After talking about terminations and 17.3s the discussion wrapped up with ABSA sharing their contact and escalation details and a Question and Answer session.

A Sad Farewell

During the workshop, Muhammed Laher, who has been with the ABSA team for many years, announced that he will now be leaving the department (and ABSA).

Many of the Debt Counsellors were sad to see him go but are excited that he will remain within the general industry space.

Muhammed expressed how much fun he has had working with the team and how happy he is that the team are currently so efficient (even being recognised as such at the annual Debt Review Awards).

Jaco and other members of the team offered their farewells and best wishes as he moves on to new opportunities. 

ABSA asked that in the future Debt Counsellors who are invited to the next workshop also invite members of their own teams and even their attorneys to attend.

The workshop was very well attended and was a great success. It also afforded many people a chance to raise various issues (and to start engagement on topics that were raised but where time did not allow to cover in detail).

ABSA will hold a similar workshop in around 3 months.