Winners announced for the 2024 CSA Awards

The winners of the 2024 Credit Services Association (CSA) Awards which is hosted as part of the trade body’s annual conference – the UK Credit and Collections Conference (UKCCC) - have been announced following a live event held at the home of all the England National football teams, the Hilton Hotel, St George’s Park, on Thursday 12 September.

The 2024 CSA Awards celebrated the outstanding work and commitment of staff and teams within its membership organisations. The awards enable employers to celebrate the versatility, commitment and innovation of individual staff members, teams, and departments.

The Lowell Financial Customer Engagement Centre picked up the CSA Team Award for its strategy to recruit, onboard and integrate new colleagues into the team, and showed a great commitment to team development across the board. 

The CSA Innovation Award – recognising high levels of creativity, adaptability, and inventiveness - was awarded to CDER Group, with entries for Phillips & Cohen Associates (UK) Ltd with Nationwide Building Society, and Verify, part of Perch Group, being highly commended.

Focusing upon the importance of training and development within firms, the Kim MacMillan Award recognises outstanding apprentices, team leaders, or a team of learning and development practitioners who have given an outstanding contribution to Learning and Development in their company. Lowell Financial’s Danielle Rhodes took home the top prize in this category, with Aldermore Bank, and MoneyPlus being highly commended by the judges.

The CSA Merit Award has two sub-categories, with Stefanie Kusznierski from Oriel Collections Ltd picking up the award for the Working with Vulnerable Customers, and Danielle Tully from ARC (Europe) winning the Customer Engagement category.

A new award for 2024, the Employer Award for ESG & Diversity in the Workplace recognised a company that had demonstrated a commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG), and diversity within the workplace, with a particular focus on how it had positively affected areas including organisational health, environmental impact and staff wellbeing. PRA Group (UK) Ltd picked up this new award on the night for its investment in a state-of-the-art working environment, combined with its attention to diversity needs across the organisation.

There were also awards for CSA Members’ performances in the Collector Accreditation Initiative (CAI) - an online test assessing debt collectors’ knowledge and scope of understanding of compliance - awarded to companies who achieved the highest rates of distinctions scores (over 90%) in their tests over the previous 12 months. 

The CAI Award for companies with fewer than 100 collectors saw first place going to CCI Credit Management, with Redwood Collections in second and coeo | uk in third.

For firms with more than 100 collectors, Moorcroft Debt Recovery Ltd took home the first place award, with PRA Group (UK) Ltd in second place and Link Financial Outsourcing Ltd in third.

Commenting on the Awards, CSA CEO Chris Leslie said: “Collections specialists work in a sensitive field that requires a high level of professionalism, patience and expertise so recognising these skills and marking the significant work undertaken is very important – and the judges were highly impressed with the care and attention that so many bring to customer service. All the CSA Award winners have positive stories to tell and it is a credit to the dedication of teams and individuals in the sector that their hard work is being recognised in this way.”

The evening also saw the presentation of CSA Honorary Membership to Sara de Tute. 

The only female President the CSA has had, so far, Sara was first elected to the Board in 2008, and following her short term as Vice-President, Sara was elected as CSA President in 2011.  Her tenure as President led the Association and it’s members through the minefield of the disbanding of the Office of Fair Trading and the introduction of the new Regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).  When her Presidency term was at an end, Sara was re-elected as a Board Director in 2014, continuing to support the membership and the Board through the challenges that a new Regulator brought to the sector.  Sara retired from the Board in 2020, having dedicated 12 years’ service to the membership, the Association executive, and to the Board of Directors.

Chris Leslie added: “Awarding an Honorary Memberships to Sara is the Association’s way of thanking Sara for her long-service and commitment to the CSA, and the industry as a result. Her contribution has been remarkable and we were delighted to present Honorary Memberships to mark this.”

The CSA Awards were delighted to conclude the dinner and awards ceremony with an after dinner speech and presentation from one of the most recognisable faces in British football and former England Manager, Kevin Keegan OBE.

The full list of 2024 CSA Award winners can be found here.