Moving licensed individuals online: you’ve helped us make some decisions
With your input, we’ve made some decisions around the licensing of individuals online.
First, some background…
We created an online business platform, called MyAccount, to reduce wait times, be more efficient and make life easier for you as one of our licensees. This has been a major multi-year project to move all our licensed sectors into MyAccount. We want debt collectors, bailiffs, debt repayment agents, funeral directors and embalmers to renew their licence online.
As part of this process, we have an opportunity to change some things that could make the process easier for you. We’re aware that each of your sectors is unique. When we began to explore different possibilities, we knew that your input was important to us to help make some key decisions. That’s why we asked you to participate in the survey.
Through our survey, we invited you to think about:
Who renews the licence for licensed individuals –the business or the individual?
As a licensed individual, are you working (or would you work) at multiple locations?
Keeping in mind what we heard from you, we’ve made some decisions.
While the individual is still ultimately responsible for making sure that they’re licensed, we’ve made the decision that the business will be responsible for renewing individual licences. Here’s why:
Through our survey, most of you told us that you want the business to renew
We’ve noticed that the business often renews individual licences
This approach is more efficient for us from a technology perspective
If you are a business owner, we will still send all our licence renewal communications to you and it’s up to you to manage your internal processes around fees. These communications will be sent to the email address you used to log into MyAccount.
We heard through our survey that you want to be able to work at several locations. We will try to find a way to make this work from a licensing perspective. While this is somewhat complicated for us and may take some time, we’re aware that some of you are already working at multiple locations and we want to make the licensing process easier for you. We’ll keep you updated on the next steps.
We will continue to communicate our timelines with you. When it comes to your renewal dates, we will send you reminders as usual.
The debt sector (debt collection agencies, collectors, bailiffs, debt repayment agencies and repayment agents) will be the first to experience this change. This is because it has the greatest number of licensed individuals and their renewals are done throughout the year, which allows us to start the process as soon as our system is ready. Also, the debt sector renewal process has fewer reporting requirements so it’s simpler to implement.
If you are new to this page and want some more context around this initiative, here’s some more information.
The response rate for the survey was 20%. (This rate represents the number of survey respondents out of total recipients. However, please note that we asked some recipients to pass on the survey to others such as debt collectors or funeral apprentices.)
Question 1: Who should be responsible for renewing and making the payment for an individual/employee licence?
What we heard: The business should be responsible – 84% The individual should be responsible – 16%
Question 2: Do you work (or want to work) at multiple business locations, or hire employees that work at multiple business locations?
What we heard: Yes – 47% No – 53%
Question 3: The key question in the survey was whether the individual should renew their licence or the business should renew on behalf of the individual. Is there anything you want us to know or consider on this topic?
What we heard: From both funeral and debt sector survey respondents, we heard that the business should be responsible for the licensing process and fees and not the individual because:
they are responsible for their employees
the process can be more efficient and done in bulk
they can ensure their employees are all licensed and are following the law
they can make the decision on reimbursement of licensing fees depending on their own business policies
Specifically, from the funeral sector, 33 people responded and to keep the individual response confidential, we took the written responses and summarized them. What we heard is that:
you want to continue your current practice, so the business should be responsible for licensing fees for their employees. This is because:
in some cases, it’s built into a company policy
there is an added value to individuals as employees
you have some concerns about privacy when the business is paying for licences
you think the individual should be responsible for licensing fees as it reinforces rights and responsibilities
The response rate for the survey was 20%. (This rate represents the number of survey respondents out of total recipients. However, please note that we asked some recipients to pass on the survey to others such as debt collectors or funeral apprentices.)
Question 1: Who should be responsible for renewing and making the payment for an individual/employee licence?
What we heard: The business should be responsible – 86% The Individual should be responsible – 14%
Question 2: Do you work (or want to work) at multiple business locations, or hire employees that work at multiple business locations?
What we heard: Yes – 41% No – 59%
Question 3: The key question in the survey was whether the individual should renew their licence or the business should renew on behalf of the individual. Is there anything you want us to know or consider on this topic?
What we heard: From both funeral and debt sector survey respondents, we heard that the business should be responsible for the licensing process and fees and not the individual because:
they are responsible for their employees
the process can be more efficient and done in bulk
they can ensure their employees are all licensed and are following the law
they can make the decision on reimbursement of licensing fees depending on their own business policies
15 people from the debt sector responded and in order to keep the individual response confidential, we took the written responses and summarized them. Some of you suggested:
the business should be responsible for the licensing process and fees to retain employee loyalty
the individual should be responsible for the licensing process and fees because:
the business already pays other fees including licensing for the business
the individual can transfer their licence to another business
Sharing the survey results and the decision is one of the ways to keep you updated throughout the process. We will be here to help along the way while we implement MyAccount for licensed individuals.
There are also some opportunities for input – we used the survey to hear your feedback, and we may also consider hosting a working group to assist with decision points on certain details.
We ask for your patience. This is not a simple transition and it’s going to take some time. Feel free to contact us during business hours if you have questions.
