Top Service News
February Construction & Credit Risk Update
Published on
Insights from CEO Emma Reilly FCICM
It’s been a bust but productive start to the year for us at Top Service. We are freshly back from the CICM’s British Credit Award,s where Top Service made the finalists lkist in two categories! It wasn’t the night for us to bring home the awards, but it was a fantastic night celebrating our wonderful credit management industry.
It was an honour to be there to watch Rosie Payne, of Saint Gobai,n collect her award for Credit Professional of the Year! A well-deserved award for Rosie. I won the award myself last year, so I know how special it feels – a huge well done to Rosie and also to the team at Saint Gobain, who also picked up an award.
We also celebrate the team at Tarmac – who picked up ‘ Excellence in Credit’ – what a win for you guys! Another well-deserved award to a brilliant team!
Further on in this update, we cover why some of our team, names I’m sure you will recognise – Laura, Lauren, Rachel and Alison decided to start their CICM qualification – a great piece for anyone thinking of doing the same.
We’ve been to a few events already this week, and Laura is attending the Let’s Talk Credit, credit circle in London in early Feb. The feeling on the ground from the majority of our contacts is that ‘volume is down and insolvencies up’. A phrase that has stuck with me since I heard it mentioned at an industry meeting I attended a couple of weeks ago.
The insolvency statistics tell us that insolvencies are down slightly, but with construction remaining the most affected industry. Now, although the numbers tell us the rates are moving in the right direction, it is clear from talking to you and other industry contacts that things are tough on the ground.
Another phrase that always. sticks with me is ‘forewarned is forearmed’, and if there’s one piece of advice I can give to you all is to make use of our member support team. If you’re looking at our credit reports and see there aren’t any trading experiences, please call us or email us. Our team can focus on the company of interest and can look at what other members have shown an active interest in and gather up-to-date, in fact up-to-the-minute trading experiences on your behalf.
Earlier escalation will also help to support you. We are seeing more and more new users to our debt recovery service, and all are experiencing great results! In fact, one of our customers sent us a test debt. It was over £50K plus statutory interest and compensation. It was collected with the charges, in full, within 8 hours, and the relationship has been maintained. My team is skilled at collecting money, professionally and quickly.
Our account managers are here to make sure you are maximising your membership and welcome the opportunity to carry out a training call with you and your teams to ensure everyone knows exactly what you have access to and how to make the most of your membership.
As always, thanks for being part of the Top Service community. Let’s stay strong, together,