25 Jul 2017 | Posted In Bob's Blog (MALG updates)

It may be the end of term for schools, colleges, and universities up and down the country but we’ve got a packed summer ahead of us at MALG finalising plans for our conference in November and continuing to engage with potential new members in wider sectors including utilities, local government, and housing.

National Members Meeting

Our National Members Meeting on 5 July was host to the launch of the Money Advice Service’s new good practice creditor toolkit on working collaboratively with debt advice agencies. We also had the pleasure of a talk from Yvonne Fovargue MP about her work on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Debt.

The delegates (from debt collectors and bailiffs to debt advisers and regulators) really enjoyed the interactive sessions run by Jane Tully of Money Advice Trust on bailiff reform and Katie Evans of Money & Mental Health Policy Institute on point of sale credit. For those who hadn’t attended a National MALG meeting before, these sessions were a real eye-opener as to how we bring together all the ‘threads’ of the money advice world to ‘work together to improve the lives of people in debt’.

The outputs of the discussions will now be used by both Money Advice Trust and Money & Mental Health Policy Institute in their policy work. Katie Evans has shared some of the key insights gathered in this blog, which is definitely worth a read.

Whether you attended or not, you can now also download all the papers and presentations associated with the meeting on our website here.

Regional members

There have also been some great interactive discussions on hot topics such as the Standard Financial Statement and the Vulnerability Registration Service at our recent regional members meetings across the country. I’m pleased to see how active and valuable our regional groups continue to be and look forward to them going from strength to strength in the future.

We are always looking to increase engagement with our regional groups and help to drive new regional membership. We have now started listing profiles for regional members on the website to help show the diversity of organisations involved. If you would like your organisation listed please contact your MALG Regional Secretary or dionne.stocking@malg.org.uk to make sure that all you are listed.

We’re also keen to make the regional reach of delegates at this year’s conference so please share info with your local utilities providers, councils, housing associations etc. All the info you need is here www.malg.org.uk/conference but please let me know if you’d like some content to send out via email.

 

National Business Members
I’m very pleased to announce that, since launching our new National Business Membership earlier this year, we now have 21 National Business Members with several others in the pipeline. Our newest additions include Arrow Global, Gregory Pennington, Credit Kudos and Watch Portfolio Management.

 

Your clients who have taken out or been refused a payday loan

The Centre for Business in Society at Coventry University, Toynbee Hall and the Financial Health Exchange are carrying out a study of the payday loan market and its customers after the changes to that market in 2015 (including the cap on the cost of credit).

They would be interested in talking to clients who have taken out or been refused a payday loan since January 2014 and are offering them a £30 Love2Shop voucher in return for participation.
Find out more.

 

Latest money advice sector news

Don’t forget that you can keep up to date with the latest money advice sector news at www.malg.org.uk/latest and we are now starting to roll out a programme of thought leadership blogging on hot topics from leading thinkers which we hope will help stimulate further debate.

Recent news items include:

 

Conference sponsors

Thank you to MALG Conference 2017 sponsors and exhibitors who are making this must-attend event possible. We still have some sponsorship and exhibition packages available so please contact me if you are interested.

And don’t forget to book your place at the MALG Conference online now!

 

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