DCASA W Cape Meeting – Report
DCASA Meeting June 2014 – Report
Debtfree attended the June 2014 meeting of the Debt Counsellors Association of South Africa (DCASA) held in Parow, Cape Town this week. The meeting was well supported with around 40 people there by the time it started at 10 am.
New Western Cape DCASA chairperson Reinhard Pettenburger-Perwald of Debt Therapy updated the audience about some new industry developments. A circular from DCASA about the amendments to the NCA was distributed to those attending. Feedback was also given in regard to the CIF.
Eugene Cillier of Payplan Solutions gave a presentation in regard to applications to the National Credit Tribunal (NCT). Applications can be made to the NCT for the equivalent of a court order where all parties to the debt review process agree on the plan. The costs are much reduced and Eugene showed how simple the documentation can be. He mentioned that at the moment NCT applications are taking a long time (up to 5 months in some cases).
Zak King [our Editor] got to address the audience and explain more about the Debt Review Awards process. He also let the audience know that they can stand in line for awards by getting their clients to interact with the www.debtfreedigi.co.za site and voting for their DC online. This voting will begin shortly.
Sponsors for the day DCM who offer Payment Distribution Agent services as the NPDA showed a quirky video about the birth of PDAs and the debt review process. It got a lot of chuckles from the audience and opened the way for Rudi Bedeker to discuss DCM’s recent Partnership pilot program in which DCM have been working with a small group of DCs to see if they can increase client retention, speed up payment and client referrals. The program included things like payment protection , special savings accounts and a 24 hour help line for stressed consumers. They say the result have been very positive.
After lunch Maryke Moore of the NCR spoke about the NCR’s Debt Counsellors monitoring visits and the new form they use to discuss various aspects with the Debt Counsellors they visit. She also discussed the NCRS data base program (www.NCRdebthelp.co.za) where Debt Counsellors update the status of their clients each month. In answer to questions from the audience she said that the NCRs monitoring visits are in a large way checks to see if the information they already have on the NCR Detb Help system matches what is happening in reality. It seems that many Debt Counsellors are not very good at keeping this information up to date. There have also been issues with the NCR Debt Help system.The NCR have now taken total ownership of the system and have appointed a company to help rework the system to be more user friendly and accurate. The presentation was well received.
MORE: Download the NCR Monitoring tool: NCR Monitoring tool
MORE: NCR circular about how they are running the NCR Debt Help system now and not DSG Circular (No.09-2014) re DSG and NCR debt help
Some images from the day:
