The Board’s September meeting was online and it was good to see fellow Board members and the team again to mark the start of the Autumn.
It was a full agenda this month, starting with discussion of updated plans for the ECB’s thematic review on overcharging of enforcement fees. At our last Board meeting we agreed to prioritise this review as the main focus of our oversight work for the rest of the year. This was in response to identified breaches at Marston Holdings that have since been published in the Guardian. In addition to the targeted work we are doing with Marston, the Board is clear that it is very important to establish whether the breaches that occurred in this case are happening more widely in the market, at other enforcement firms.
Our discussion focused on scope and timeframes. In particular, we discussed and agreed to widen the scope of our thematic review to cover overcharging more broadly – and specifically to include the application of sale and disposal fees, as well as the application of multiple enforcement fees. In agreeing to this, the Board stressed the importance of taking this opportunity to deliver a review that provides assurance across all the key risks around overcharging.
We noted that this is likely to mean that the review will not conclude until early 2026 and we discussed options for ensuring that this significant new priority workstream is appropriately resourced, without impacting our wider functions. Board members were pleased to hear that the review has begun, with the first wave of firms having been informed that they have been selected for involvement. As not all accredited firms will be included in the thematic review, we agreed that participating firms must not share the outcomes of their reviews. This is to prevent firms gaining a competitive advantage over those not selected.
The next item on the agenda was the draft standards and consultation on vulnerability and ability to pay. Delivering standards in these crucial and complex areas has been one of the ECB’s priorities from the start. We took the decision last year to remove these sections from version one of the standards so that they could be given the time and specific focus that they required. It is excellent to now be on the cusp of consulting on draft standards and getting closer to implementation in these critical areas.
The draft standards and consultation paper that we considered were informed by significant input from industry and debt advice workshops, lived experience research and facilitated workshops with Enforcement Agents. The learning from all of these sources was fed into our discussion.
The Board discussion covered a lot of ground and there are some areas for the team to take forward before the consultation is launched. One example is the extent to which the vulnerability and ability to pay standards would apply to third parties who become involved in the enforcement process. This is likely to be an area for discussion during the consultation. We also discussed the importance of firms taking ownership of embedding the new standards in their businesses and practices. The consultation will therefore seek views on appropriate implementation periods, recognising that the standards will require careful thought to be given by firms and that this is not an area where quick fixes are necessarily possible.
The consultation will be launched in the coming weeks and we are hoping that we will continue to benefit from further constructive and considered input. Whilst the overall rationale and narrative from our earlier discussion paper and workshops has not changed significantly, our proposals have evolved in a number of areas to reflect feedback. We are also conscious that this will be the first time that anyone has seen draft standards to give effect to the proposals set out in our previous discussion paper.
Finally, we reflected on the fact that this was the last meeting for Board member Jenny Watson, who joined the Board in 2022 and is leaving after completion of her first term. Jenny has made a significant contribution to the ECB in its early stages, and we are grateful to her for applying her expertise and experience to the cause.
We are currently in the final stages of recruitment for two new Board members, at least one of which we hope will have joined the Board by our next meeting in October. We had a very large, varied and impressive field of candidates. We’ll provide an update on who we appoint soon.
Catherine Brown
Chair, Enforcement Conduct Board