A licensed insolvency practitioner is someone who holds the necessary qualifications and is registered with the Australian Financial Security Authority (AFSA) and or the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
To be licensed to offer all personal insolvency services you need to be Registered as a Trustee in Bankruptcy with AFSA. To become a Registered Trustee in Bankruptcy you need to hold a university degree in accountancy and be a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants or CPA Australia. In addition, it is highly desirable that you also be a member of the Insolvency Practitioners Association of Australia. To obtain all of these qualifications it takes many years of study. It takes a minimum of 5 years to obtain these formal qualifications but it can take much longer to become registered as a Trustee in Bankruptcy. Obtaining the formal qualifications is only the first step. Gaining the necessary work experience will take much longer and AFSA conducts lengthy and thorough interviews before they register applicants. AFSA will test the applicant’s knowledge of the Bankruptcy Act very thoroughly, so unless you have many years of experience in administering personal insolvency cases, it is unlikely you will gain registration.
The benefit of dealing with a fully licensed insolvency practitioner is that they are highly experienced professionals and have completed very demanding studies. The other benefit of dealing with a fully licensed insolvency practitioner is that they can offer all personal insolvency services including:

• Debt Agreements
• Personal Insolvency Agreements
• Bankruptcy

When dealing with a fully licensed insolvency practitioner, you can relax knowing that the practitioner won’t be biased towards a particular product as they can legitimately offer all insolvency services. Some companies advertising their services on the internet don’t have fully qualified insolvency practitioners on staff and will instead charge you for doing some preparatory work and will then refer your case onto another company at a later stage. This of course leads to duplication in costs and unnecessary delays.
Here at Debt Free you don’t have to worry about any of that because our CEO is fully licensed insolvency practitioner with both AFSA and ASIC. We offer all personal insolvency services.
We look forward to assisting you with your personal insolvency issues.  Call our friendly personal debt advisors on 1800 462 767.