NCR Conference: Highlights (Part 1)
NCR Conference 2017
The National Credit Regulator (NCR) held their annual conference in Cape Town in December 2017. It was attended by credit providers and Debt Counsellors from all over the region.
After an introduction and some announcements by the NCR’s Morris Maluleke the day began with a official welcome by the NCR’s acting head of Debt Review Mr Ngoako Mabeba.
Welcome
As a lover of statistics, he ran the audience through some stats in regard to how the industry is doing. Overall he was positive about how the industry is progressing. The large local audience appreciated the NCR’s effort in holding the conference on the opposite side of the country from their home base in Midrand Gauteng. Cape Town has the second highest amount of Debt Counsellors in the country and many of the consumers under debt review make use of Cape Town Debt Counsellors to service their debt review needs.
Next Ms Nthupang Magolego (who is Senior Legal Advisor at the NCR) spoke about the objectives of the Conference (not a workshop as Morris pointed out since there was less back and forth planned for during presentations. Questions would be answered at the end of the day).
She discussed 10 years of the NCR and NCA focussing on changes to the Act as well as legal battles that have been fought. She also highlighted enforcement in regard to breaches of the Act (both the victories and losses).
‘the NCR has … over the last 10 years … helped educate 403 108 consumers’
She highlighted that in the nearly 4000 education programmes the NCR has held over the last 10 years they have helped educate 403 108 consumers with information about the NCA and in many cases debt review. These figures are somewhat underwhelming and relate back to common complaints by Debt Counsellors that the NCR are not promoting debt review so they have to spend huge amounts on advertising to try acquire new clients.
She bravely touched on the planned Portfolio Committee bill amendments to the NCA and discussed Debt Intervention. She described it as debt counselling done by the NCR. This is a plan by the Portfolio Committee to task the NCR with helping poorer consumers who are in financial trouble directly. With the help of the NCT it is hoped that if the minister identifies a particular group of consumers (say from an industry suffering huge retrenchments – eg. mine workers or Video store owners) that they can receive special help beyond what is currently available (as long as they earn very little and have a small amount of debt).
DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION
If you missed out you can still download the presentation to get the highlights of her speech.
NCR DEBT COUNSELLING CONFERENCE December 2017 overview presentation
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More info on the NCR conference will follow over the next few days here on the website and in this months Debtfree Magazine