Completion Payment 20% all paid by ESFA?

The service desk is correct, it depends on the employer's circumstances and isn't always a flat 100% from the ESFA. See below extract from the technical funding guide:

279. If the apprentice completes their apprenticeship, the same approach applies to the completion payment (£3,000 in this example) at the end as follows:

Employer A – pays the levy and has sufficient funds in their employer account to cover the costs of training. We source 100% of the monthly instalment from the employer’s account. We will not co-invest, so we debit £3,000 from their account.

Employer B – does not pay the levy. We will co-invest 90%, and the employer pays 10%. This means we will pay £2,700, and the employer pays £300.

Employer C – pays the levy but has insufficient funds in their employer account. We use the funds in the employer's account first. For the remaining amount, we will co-invest 90%, and the employer pays 10%. If we assume the employer has £200 available in their employer account in the month of the completion payment, then we use this amount first. This takes the employer account balance to zero and the remaining £2,800 will be coinvested. We will pay £2,520 and the employer pays £280. 

Many thanks Ben for clarifying.  Every day's a school day.  In this case it's employer C where they did drop into coinvestment in the past so we'll need to invoice them.  Another process to build in!

Kind regards

Neil

Just a small note. If you were due any employer coninvestment from a levy payer with insufficient funds for any on programme payments, and you don't report that you collected this in a PMR record, ESFA won't release your 20%.

If no co-investment was required (or you did already collect it) for on programme payments, BUT there was one last insufficient funds generated from the completion payment, ESFA don't withhold that completion payment. They can't really, as you wouldn't know it was insufficient funds until they pay you, plus this can happen between R13 and R14, when you'd have no way of knowing it was insufficient funds as you won't have the required month end reports! You should still collect it at the end, and you'd need a good excuse if you were audited it and you hadn't collected it, but you'll still get the 20% completion payment minus what the employer was required to pay.

Many thanks for that Ruth.  We were aware of the requirement to ensure we'd collected all on programme co-investment before they would release the completion payment, but hadn't come across this before regarding the completion 5%.  To be fair I'm fairly new to this, only having completed my second full year as part of the funding team, and previously this was mostly dealt with by another member of the team who has left.  Every day is very much a school day!

We were wondering how we would record this additional payment for the completion element, but as you say by the time we know we need to collect it they've already paid us the lion's share anyway.  With a learner that isn't rolling over for another year we wouldn't record it as it's not really required at that stage?

Neil Briggs I think I'd be reluctant to roll over into a new year just for this. I'd probably put the PMR in the closed year, so it won't appear in any ILR, but you've got the data (and financial evidence) should you be audited. Other people may disagree and say you should roll it, but since the enrolment isn't current, the data isn't really relevant?

Thanks Ruth Canham-James, this makes complete sense to me.