Know your obligations

The information on this page is to help you understand debt repayment laws, and ensure you maintain your good standing as a business. This is a general overview of our expectations and the laws we oversee. It is your responsibility as a BC-licensed debt repayment agency or debt repayment agent to review the laws in detail, comply with municipal bylaw and get independent legal advice, if necessary.

As part of our inspection or investigative process, we may impose an administrative monetary penalty (financial penalty) for certain violations of the laws we oversee. Every contravention has a base penalty amount, based in part on the seriousness of the infraction.

Read the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act.
Read the Debt Collection and Repayment Regulation.
Understand all our policies, including about administrative penalties.

Debt repayment agency

Remote working guidelines

BC consumer protection laws require that businesses have a licence for each location from where it conducts business. Conducting business from a location means several things, including:

A location from which your physical presence, address, or telephone number in British Columbia is given in a telephone directory.
A location from which your physical presence, address, or telephone number in British Columbia is given in any verbal or written advertisement,
You have, in British Columbia, a resident agent, or a warehouse, office, or place of business.

We understand that you may provide remote working options to your employees.

Provided they are not conducting business in the way described above, remote workers may work from remote locations if they follow these guidelines:

They can only work remotely from their home-based location.
If the law or health directives allow, they are only to directly meet and serve clients from licensed locations and not at remote or unlicensed home-based locations.
While conducting business, they must only, use the contact information of the licensed location in any visual representation, correspondence, business cards, or on any printed or electronic advertisement.
Other than cell phone numbers or corporate IP-based phone numbers, they may not disclose their personal telephone number(s) to suppliers or clients nor reveal that they are conducting business from any unlicensed location.
Payments for services may be received only at the licensed office unless those payments are through electronic means via credit card or immediate EFT, and no payment information is retained or stored in the home-based location.
All client files, arrangement details, and associated original records of accounting or contracts handled by a telecommuter must be kept at the businesses’ licensed location. (It is permissible for telecommuters to retain copies of routine correspondence and other records at their home-based location).
Persons selling or otherwise arranging for the supply of goods and services to consumers with the expectation of receiving payment or benefit for so doing, are deemed to be acting as licensees and are required to comply with the provisions of these guidelines.

Except for items 6 and 7 above, these guidelines do not apply to employees of licensees performing purely accounting or other administrative functions.