Weekly Blog by Philip King, CEO of the ICM - 'Mixed Fortunes'

The last week and a half has been pretty amazing. I returned from a great two-week break touring the Scottish Highlands, I've had my 57th birthday, and my first grandchild has been born! The North West of Scotland has breathtaking scenery and it was brilliant to spend some quality time relaxing with Mary, my long-suffering wife. Apart from one afternoon looking at late payment issues and talking to a Financial Times journalist, I genuinely avoided emails and voicemails and it made a pleasant change. I'll skirt round my birthday since I've had so many of them now that there's not much to say!

The really exciting news is the arrival of my grandson which has brought back all the emotion that accompanied the arrival of our own children 29, 26, and 21 years ago, and has reminded me of the miracle that childbirth represents. My blogs aren't often personal but I couldn't let this event pass by without a mention, although I won't pick up my phone and start imposing pictures on you as I might if you were here!

On my office desk when I returned to ICM HQ was the StepChange Debt Charity Statistical Yearbook for 2012 and it brought me back to the real world with a bump. On average across the year, someone sought help from the charity every 78 seconds either online or by phone and we have to remind ourselves that StepChange is just one route for debt advice. There are numerous organisations offering support, help, and advice and – looking at the most recent Credit Action debt statistics – I see that Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 7,824 new debt problems every working day during the year ending March 2013. Worse still, the letter accompanying the StepChange report reveals that, for about a quarter of the clients they advised last year, they were unable to suggest a way forward because the client lacked the means to cover essential living costs while insolvency was inappropriate for their circumstances.

To help some of these clients StepChange has launched a new 'token payment' service, an interim measure of short-term relief allowing clients time to get their affairs in order where there is a reasonable expectation that their circumstances will improve in the reasonably short-term. Token payments, of course, are not new but this approach to their administration is, and it coincides with a pilot 'Sustainable Debt Advice Project' run by AdviceUK which is now being rolled out more widely.

Just as we all have cause to celebrate from time to time, so we all face problems and many customers get into financial difficulty because of a sudden or dramatic change in circumstances. We want to be paid what we are owed, and solutions giving customers who want to pay some temporary breathing space are to be welcomed, especially if the longer-term prospects are improved as a result.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to thank Charles Mayhew, Sue Chapple, and Sue Kettle for their excellent guest blogs while I was away. I appreciate their support and enjoyed their contributions.

Weekly Blog by Philip King, CEO of the ICM - 'Wake up and smell the coffee'

When I stay in London, I often use a hotel near Swiss Cottage. It's on the Finchley Road, located in a typical suburb of the capital, its street lined with shops. Over the last few years, I've noticed something that was brought home to me on Monday.

Within about half a mile, there are a number of fast food establishments, some long established cafes and restaurants and a couple of Costa Coffee shops. There are also a couple of independent coffee shops with the usual comforts. One of these closed down a few months ago and was emptied; it has now been replaced by another one that - if you hadn't seen the empty shop in the interim - you could mistake for what was there before.

Further down towards Swiss Cottage Station, it happened again - a new shop replacing one that has closed down. Then more recently, I noticed that that too has now closed down, having been open for no more than a handful of weeks.

Now I know nothing about these businesses or their owners but, from using them, I get the impression there is an individual who has fulfilled a dream by opening the premises and is clearly intent on giving customers a good experience. They work hard and want their enterprise to succeed. But, in all but one case so far, they've failed.

The obvious question that occurs to me is why - when a coffee shop has failed on a particular site - you would think it a good idea to open another? It's not just about location, but also about the clientele, the volume of turnover that can be generated, and the business model of competing operations. And this is obviously not a problem unique to Finchley Road; how often do we see businesses opening where the owners clearly haven't given enough thought to whether they've chosen the right place for them?

I said at an event hosted by Vince Cable, Mark Prisk, and Francis Maude over a year ago that one of the issues arising from the rationalisation of the Civil Service (and, indeed the private sector) would be people receiving a large redundancy payment and using it to fulfil their lifetime dream of starting a business, only to see that dream turn into a nightmare. This is one of the reasons why I believe we have still to see the peak of insolvencies and why business education is so vital. Scenarios like this can be heart-wrenchingly sad and avoiding them would be good for all of us and for the economy.

We are pleased, therefore, to be actively engaged in the BIS Finance Fitness Event and Campaign being launched in London today with the aim of making new businesses and existing ones better equipped and able to survive. We will be continuing to provide advice through our Credit Management Helpline and Managing Cashflow Guides (www.creditmanagement.org.uk) and we're also launching an SME Collections Toolkit as part of ICM Online Services that will provide very practical advice and tools with templates, video role-plays and more.

Those of us supplying and talking to small and start-up businesses could do worse than point people to advice like this; after all, if they get paid, we're more likely to get paid too!