Roadmap with a long road
It is a relief to finally know the details of the roadmap out of lockdown. The roadmap, announced by Boris Johnson on Monday, and the incredible vaccination programme are providing the light at the end of a very long tunnel for many businesses. Whilst MA Group hasn’t been impacted financially by the pandemic, we have found managing the business much more challenging as we, and our suppliers, have had to manage the needs for Covid-safe working within our offices and in customers’ homes. So we look forward to a return to some form of normality.
However for the construction industry there is a long road ahead. The impact of Brexit, Covid-19 and now the Reverse Charge VAT rules will create disruption until at least the end of 2021 (see below). This month we bring you news on this as well as the usual MAD announcements and updates. We are also delighted to be announcing a save the date notice for the MA Group Charity Golf Day and Dinner 2021!
Spare a thought for builders
Imagine that you own a business that:
Then imagine that you have managed to adapt to all of this and then the UK government throws new tax legislation at you that hits your cashflow just as it starts to withdraw the Covid-19 financial support schemes that you have relied on since spring last year. Welcome to the construction industry, and the property claims reinstatement industry in particular.
In our latest opinion piece we explain the challenges facing the construction industry and why insurers need to spare a thought for building contractors. We explain the impact these issues are having on insurers and their customers and how insurers can work with MA Group to help keep the wheels of property claims management turning. To read the full opinion piece please CLICK HERE.
Reverse Charge VAT
From 1st March 2021 the VAT regulations for CIS (Construction Industry Scheme) registered businesses are changing. Any business that is registered for CIS (gross or net) needs to comply with the VAT Reverse Charge rules for all sales invoices raised from 1st March 2021.
This means that main contractors will stop paying VAT to subcontractors working on projects where the CIS applies. Instead, the main contractor will pay the VAT directly to HMRC.
Where a contractor makes a sale to an organisation that isn’t VAT registered or is an “end user” (an organisation that does not make onward sales of activities covered by CIS) then the VAT Reverse Charge rules do not apply.
Our clients are end users and so will not notice any change to the invoices they receive from us. However, our contractors will not be able to apply VAT to their sales invoices to MA Assist and other main contractors, and will start feeling the cashflow impact of this from the end of March onwards.
A recent Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey of 3,568 construction firms found that one in in eight construction firms have low or no confidence that they will survive until the end of April. Here at MA Group we have strong processes and management tools in place to quickly identify poor financial and operational performance issues within our supply chains, so we can provide immediate support when needed or assign new builders should the worst happen. Clients will need to understand the challenges the construction industry is facing and help us to support the builders.
Continued investment
Our investment in IT, systems, processes and people continues and we have completed our second project. We have now launched the update report for Revival technicians, enabling them to carry out claim updates on a job on site and to transmit photographs and data back to the office where the update report can be generated immediately. Now that technicians can produce the report using Scoper, administration for the technicians and the office staff has been reduced and the reports are logged on Pulse in real time.
We have also recruited another new member of staff to our proposition team.
Simon Kaye has joined us as Business Analyst. He has over 10 years’ experience in business analysis and operations and will be supporting the rest of the team in developing our IT and systems projects across the MA Group.
He will also be involved in analysing our huge amounts of claims data to identify trends and behaviours and then supporting the resulting process improvement projects.
MA Group MAD Awards
The MADest person in the MA Group in January was Jasmine Gregg, one of our claims technicians.
Jasmine had no less than three MAD announcements in January – two concerning vulnerable customers and one for a high profile customer. She received praise for how she handled each of the individual claims by taking ownership and proactively managing them from the outset whilst also keeping all relevant parties informed throughout.
Jasmine has been with us for only three months but is already demonstrating a can-do and proactive approach to her work, always keen to move a claim forward rather than just completing a task.
Well done Jasmine, keep up the good work.
Save the date
After a break for Covid-19 last year we are delighted to announce that we will be hosting the annual MA Group Charity Golf Day and Dinner this year. So save the date – 23rd September 2021 – and we will be in touch!
Even if Boris’s roadmap timetable slips a little we are confident we will be able to host this event in line with whatever social distancing requirements may remain in force. If you have any questions please get in touch with Sally-Ann Johnson who will be doing her usual marvellous job of organising it all.
