IP’s addressed

When discussing the benefit of Bank of Scotland Corporate’s accounts for Insolvency Practitioners with Simon Thornton of Houghton Stone Business Recovery (HSBR), the word ‘simple’ appears frequently. As simplicity is rare in the world of an Insolvency Practitioner, more and more are taking advantage of Bank of Scotland’s offering.

“The service is exactly what we need,” says Simon. “It’s simple, flexible and run by people who actually understand us and our business. It’s like having a team that is thinking ahead for us.”

Bank of Scotland Corporate provides a package which meets the demands of this fast-moving sector. Once an Insolvency Practitioner is appointed, they need to have accounts to hold any funds accruing to their client as soon as possible. Accounts can be open and earning interest within 24 hours.

This is achieved by pre-allocating accounts to each company. “We’ll have around 20 waiting at any one time,” explains Simon. “Once we get appointed to a case it is just a matter of contacting Bank of Scotland to open it for us. We can then start transferring funds in immediately if we need to.”

What was once a lengthy process now takes less than a day meaning Simon and his team can concentrate on other matters. This isn’t the only such improvement that HSBR has noticed since moving to Bank of Scotland.

It’s like having a team that is thinking ahead for us

“When we close a case, we need to know how much interest we’ve earned and stop it running. Previously that meant moving everything out of the interest-bearing account into a separate, non-interest-bearing account to get the final figure and produce the final receipts and payments. Now we just contact the Bank of Scotland team and they make the account non-interest bearing on the spot. That’s it, simple.”

As these accounts can be managed online, the Insolvency Practitioner can utilise other features to save time and money; Instantaneous payments, access to accrued interest to date and an application detailing what funds have cleared, what are due to clear and when. All of which means the account can be managed without resorting to mountains of paper work.

“Some of these things on their own may not seem all that significant,” continues Simon. “But added up, they are. The team is always available to speak to and I’ve always found them to be helpful and knowledgeable.”

“We have spent what, in comparison, seems like a ridiculous amount of time working around our accounts with other providers,” says Simon. “As a result we are now moving all our business to Bank of Scotland. I can see a considerable amount of growth for the company over the next couple of years and no reason why we won’t be moving forward with Bank of Scotland by our side.”