No one should be in any doubt, the Scottish Government’s new proposals for Protected Trust Deed reform is about taking the heat out of the Protected Trust Deed market and ending the trafficking of debtors between lead generation and personal insolvency firms.

It’s no secret that with some firms now reportedly paying in excess of £2,000 for referrals, Scotland’s Trust Deed market has become an overinflated bubble with debtors being “mis-sold” products as new lead generation firms sprout up daily and chase down every possible lead for the lucrative fees that some firms are now dangerously paying.

The exorbitant fees have resulted in saturation level TV and radio campaigns that push and sell statutory remedies as products and don’t promote best advice. For some firms, the use of the products themselves in their company names, like Trust Deed, give away the game.

However, what many debtors are unaware of is in actual fact many of these firms are just lead generators whose entire business model is about trafficking debtors to insolvency firms for ridiculous referral fees. In addition to this, many debtors don’t realise that such levels of fees have created a high risk culture of mis-selling, with many being pushed into solutions that are not appropriate and are destined to fail when payments are not maintained and debts are handed back; but only after the lead generator has been paid and the debtor has made months of contributions towards a remedy that was never going to work.

The practice of paying fees has been allowed in Scotland since 2008, but only for work done. The logic being where someone else has gathered information about a debtor and passed it to an Insolvency Practitioner, then it is acceptable for that practitioner to pay that intermediary for the work they have done. This removes the need for the practitioner to do the work and prevents duplication, although they are still obliged to validate the information provided.

However, whereas such fees began at £2-300, they have exploded in recent years with some English firms now paying in excess of £2,000 per referral, allowing them to buy up significant portions of the Scottish Market.

However, the new Protected Trust Deed regulations which will be laid before the Scottish Parliament in early September and are expected to come into force by November are the clearest sign yet that the Scottish Government intends to curb the practice and clamp down on the mis-selling culture.

The new provisions that will be introduced will no longer allow trustees to recover referral fees as part of their outlays for a case and instead will require them to include them as debts into the case, where they will only receive a dividend on the fees and be treated like other creditors.

The way trustees charge their fees against cases will also change, meaning they will no longer be able to charge on a time and line basis and will have to propose a setup fee at the outset to creditors, with proposals thereafter only to take a percentage of the ingathered funds from the case. Effectively this will mean trustees will have to share the risk of the case failing with the creditors throughout the lifetime of the case and, logically ensure only those cases likely to succeed are taken on at the outset.

In addition to this new provisions will be brought forward extending the minimum time a trust deed lasts from 3 to 4 years, whereas the duration a debtor pays into a bankruptcy will, for the time being anyway, remain at 3 years. This means many debtors faced with the prospect of having to pay a trust deed for 4 years are more likely to opt for a bankruptcy where they will only pay for 3 years; or alternatively where they want to avoid that remedy and can repay their debts within a reasonable timeframe, a debt payment programme under the Debt Arrangement Scheme.

The only obvious conclusion that can be drawn from a consideration of these proposals, is that the Scottish Government are determined to take the air out the over inflated bubble that is the Scottish Trust Deed market.

And who can blame them?

The current state of the market is now at a dangerous level. The risks of mis-selling are high and many vulnerable debtors are now being targeted by firms, who to put it simply should not be advising anyone on anything and it would not be unfair to call them rogues.

The end result will probably be more sequestrations and a greater uptake of the Debt Arrangement Scheme by debtors. It will also probably mean that the high profile TV and radio campaigns will also come to an end as the commercials behind such campaigns will no longer be sustainable. We are also likely to see more insolvency firms, who are far better regulated by regulatory professional bodies, having to market themselves directly to consumers.

If this leads to better advice and less mis-selling, then that’s no bad thing.

I am looking forward to it and being able to breathe again.