COS 2012 Debates: MinLaw – IPTO Caseload and Service Levels

by MP for Aljunied GRC, Sylvia Lim


Several of my constituents are undischarged bankrupts. They wish to move their cases along but tell me of the frustration they face in dealing with the Insolvency and Public Trustee’s Office (IPTO). I am not sure if this is representative of overall service levels but this has been their experience.

Their feedback is that trying to fix appointments with the IPTO officers in charge of their cases is difficult and results in long delays; when they want to leave phone messages, the mailboxes are full; there was one instance when a proposal for settlement made took more than a year to elicit a response.

From the statistics published on IPTO’s caseload, it appears that, overall, the number of new bankruptcy cases and new corporate insolvencies each year had fallen over a ten year period. This does not tell us of the caseload accumulated over the years or whether there are particular bottlenecks which have affected service delivery.

Specifically, since the Bankruptcy Act was amended in 2009, bankruptcy applications where the debt is $100,000 or less have to be referred by the High Court to the Official Assignee for assessment as to whether they should be placed under a Debt Repayment Scheme (DRS) in lieu of bankruptcy. What has been the impact of the DRS on IPTO’s workflow? Would it make sense to outsource DRS assessments to an accounting firm?

In summary, how does IPTO measure its service delivery levels?