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Peer Review Criteria

The Debt Review Awards are a yearly celebration of the hard work done across the debt counselling industry.

As part of the Awards process, each year, Debt Counsellors, credit providers, attorneys, PDAs, and other industry partners take part in a peer review process where they evaluate one another.

These peer reviews help highlight who is offering the highest levels of service and who are helping consumers move forward on their debt review journey.

By its nature the peer reviews (and later the results and industry feedback) also help identify areas where the industry can grow.

A very common question in regard to the process is what are the main criteria used to evaluate your peers?

This information is available on the www.debtreviewawards.co.za website and has been made available in online workshops and videos (such as this one here for 2026) but we thought to share some of the main criteria here to help share that information further.

Who Can Participate?

You may wonder who is considered a peer and who gets considered in the process.

Registration with the NCR and being listed on their official database of registrants is the starting point. While consumers and service providers may have opinions (reflected in who they chose to sign up with), these do not form part of the peer review process.

Only those who are registered with the NCR (current, not lapsed or deregistered) are considered and invited via email to participate.

Criteria

What about the criteria that are used?

The criteria below are those being used during the peer reviews for the 2025 to 2026 cycle. They are similar to those used in the past though it must be noted that some reviews will feature slightly different phrasing but with the same meaning. It is also good practice to ask the same questions of participants again, with different phrasing, to measure consistency.

The criteria chosen are designed to reflect the legal requirements, everyday challenges and agreed industry expectations that different industry partners work with.

Let us look at the questions used later on in the process after some shortlisting has been done to separate active and inactive NCR registrants.

Debt Counsellors

Credit Provider peers are asked to consider their data and comment on the following:

    • PDA collection ratio (how much consumers actually pay compared to what was agreed)
    • Client retention (for example comparing 17.1 notices to month 3 payments)
    • Proposal quality
    • Speed and effectiveness when attending to queries (within 5 to 10 days)
    • Communication skills of the debt counsellor and their staff
    • Debt counselling knowledge and that of their employees
    • Adherence to industry timelines (17.1, 17.2, proposals)
    • Optional use of DCRS
    • Fairness in balancing the needs of credit providers and consumers
    • Visible effort to improve the industry
    • Business practice (ethical conduct, consumer education, willingness to engage, innovation)
    • Approach to taking matters to court or the tribunal

Credit Providers

Debt Counsellors are asked to consider how each credit provider performs in areas such as:

    • Provision of COBs within the required timelines
    • Stopping harassment of consumers once they apply for debt review
    • Cancelling debit orders on client accounts
    • Adherence to industry timelines (17.1 acknowledgements, 17.2, court order implementation)
    • Minimising unnecessary or unreasonable counter proposals
    • Acceptance of DCRS proposals
    • Not opposing matters at court unnecessarily
    • Speed and effectiveness in resolving queries
    • Speed and effectiveness in resolving complaints
    • Communication and knowledge of call centre staff
    • Provision of Paid Up Letters and sorting out end balance differences

Attorneys

Attorneys representing the other side of the industry (either for consumers or credit providers) are asked to rate:

    • Professionalism of the attorney and their staff
    • Communication skills, preparation, and process knowledge
    • Negotiation ability and willingness
    • Response times to queries
    • Whether the attorney is approachable and reasonable

Credit Bureaus

These criteria will be refined during 2026 as this is a new category where a certificate of recognition will be awarded. At present, the criteria include:

    • Comprehensiveness of credit reports
    • Pricing, Billing and Payment processes
    • Response times to correspondence
    • Speed of resolving queries
    • Whether reports meet industry needs
    • Integration options and how well integration works
    • How updated and complete the data is
    • Speed of resolving complaints
    • Consumer education efforts
    • Whether data is provided only to appropriate parties
    • Industry participation

Apples To Apples

While this is not an exhaustive list of every criteria it provides a meaningful overview of the types of criteria covered.

The process is complex with the computer system doing most of the heavy lifting (though later audited by humans) and ensuring that the right person does the right review about the right candidate. 

The system is designed to create an even playing field for all NCR registrants who are considered and provide accurate outcomes.

As the organising team always say: Compare apples to apples, oranges to ranges. Keep it fair.

Looking Ahead to 2026

As mentioned, one of the new features for 2026 is that the peer review cycle will also include reviews about credit bureaus.

This was a previously requested improvement and the organisers are all about using feedback to improve the process. This will be one of two new categories.

The other will be a division of the Medium Debt Counsellor category into (1) Medium and (2) Medium + (to help create more realistic comparisons between practices in this wide category.

Work is also currently underway to explore how PDA data (with existing and expanded consent) can be used to help establish useful “norms” to help speed up the initial stages of the peer review processes in the future. This is aimed at allowing those who participate in the peer reviews to have even more time doing deep dives into participants and providing the best possible feedback.

Tell Us How to Improve

The Awards process grows stronger every year because of feedback from those who work in debt management every day.

If you have suggestions about how these criteria or the review process can be improved, please visit www.debtreviewawards.co.za or email DRA@debtfreedigi.co.za to share your thoughts.

All suggestions are welcome and carefully considered.