IBC Resolution Professional Support: Who Needs It and Who Does Not
Whether IBC Resolution Professional Support applies to a given business is the first thing worth settling, and it is where most of the early questions land. The questions below are the ones raised most often in practice; the full scope of the service is on the IBC Resolution Professional Support page.
Who typically engages PNPC for RP support — the RP directly, or the creditors?
Both, in different capacities. Most commonly, the RP engages PNPC directly as part of the professional team, with the fee and scope approved by the Committee of Creditors under Regulation 34/34B of the IBBI (CIRP) Regulations. Separately, an individual financial creditor sitting on the CoC sometimes engages PNPC independently — to interrogate the RP's numbers, evaluate resolution plans from that creditor's own perspective, or substantiate its claim during the claims process.
In practice: We are explicit with every client about which capacity we are engaged in. Supporting the RP's process and advising one creditor's interest within that process are different mandates, and mixing them without disclosure creates a conflict we do not accept.
What is the Committee of Creditors (CoC) and how does its composition get decided?
The CoC comprises all financial creditors of the corporate debtor, with voting share proportionate to the financial debt owed to each. It is constituted by the RP based on the claims admitted from financial creditors after the claims verification exercise. The CoC exercises key decision-making powers during CIRP — approving the RP's fee, approving resolution plans by the requisite voting threshold (66% for most key decisions, 51% for certain routine matters), and deciding whether to extend the CIRP timeline or move to liquidation.
In practice: Because CoC voting share is directly derived from admitted claims, the claims verification exercise is not a clerical formality — errors there change who controls the vote. We treat claims reconciliation with the same rigour as an audit working paper.
What is Section 29A and why does it matter for resolution plan evaluation?
Section 29A of the Code specifies categories of persons who are ineligible to submit a resolution plan — including undischarged insolvents, wilful defaulters, persons whose accounts have been classified as non-performing assets for a specified period and have not made good the default (subject to certain cure provisions), persons convicted of specified offences, and persons connected to any of the above, among other categories. The provision was introduced specifically to prevent defaulting promoters from regaining control of the corporate debtor through the resolution process at a discount, colloquially referred to as the 'back-door entry' problem the amendment was designed to close.
In practice: We support the RP's due diligence on Section 29A eligibility declarations from resolution applicants, working alongside the RP's legal counsel — a plan later found to have been approved from an ineligible applicant is vulnerable to being unwound, which is a risk no CoC wants to discover after implementation has begun.
How is a resolution plan actually evaluated and approved?
Resolution plans received in response to the RP's invitation are evaluated first for compliance with Section 30(2) — mandatory contents including payment of insolvency resolution process costs, payment to operational creditors (not less than what they would receive in liquidation, or the amount they would receive if distribution followed the Section 53 waterfall, whichever is higher), and a demonstrated implementation and management capability. Compliant plans are then placed before the CoC, which evaluates them on commercial parameters — value maximisation, funding certainty, timeline — and approves a plan by a vote of not less than 66% of voting share under Section 30(4). The RP then submits the CoC-approved plan to the Adjudicating Authority for final approval under Section 31.
In practice: The 'commercial wisdom' of the CoC in choosing between compliant plans is generally not open to challenge before the Adjudicating Authority — which places real weight on the financial evaluation matrix we build being rigorous and complete before the vote, not after.
Can PNPC act as the registered valuer required under the CIRP Regulations?
Registered valuer appointments under Regulation 27 of the IBBI (CIRP) Regulations (for the fair value and liquidation value determinations under Regulation 35) — for Land and Building, Plant and Machinery, and Securities or Financial Assets — require IBBI-recognised registered valuer status in the specific asset class, which is a distinct professional registration from a CA practice. PNPC coordinates with registered valuers as part of the overall financial advisory support (reviewing valuation methodology for reasonableness, incorporating valuation outputs into the IM and plan evaluation), but does not itself act as the appointed registered valuer for these statutory purposes unless a specific team member holds that separate registration for the relevant asset class.
In practice: We are direct about this distinction with every RP we support — conflating financial advisory with the statutory registered valuer role is a compliance risk we flag rather than obscure.
Can a corporate debtor withdraw from CIRP once it has been admitted?
Yes, in limited circumstances. Section 12A allows withdrawal of an admitted CIRP application, with the approval of 90% of the voting share of the CoC, on an application made to the Adjudicating Authority — typically where the applicant creditor and the corporate debtor reach a settlement after admission. This is a high threshold precisely because withdrawal after admission affects all creditors, not just the applicant who initiated the process.
In practice: Where a Section 12A withdrawal is being contemplated, the financial advisory question shifts to verifying the settlement terms are actually being funded and that other creditors' interests (who may have already incurred CIRP-stage costs) are appropriately addressed before the withdrawal application is filed.
What is a monitoring committee and does PNPC support it after plan approval?
A monitoring committee is sometimes constituted under the terms of an approved resolution plan itself (it is a plan-design choice, not a mandatory statutory body under the Code for every case) to oversee the implementation of the plan — tracking fund infusion, operational handover, and compliance with the plan's payment schedule to creditors. Where such a committee is constituted and PNPC has been part of the CIRP-stage financial advisory, we frequently continue supporting the monitoring committee's financial oversight through implementation, since the historical context and financial model built during CIRP directly inform what 'on track' implementation looks like.
In practice: Post-approval monitoring is an underused safeguard in many resolutions — plans that quietly slip on their funding schedule are easier to catch early with a financial team that already understands the plan's assumptions in detail.
What should an RP look for when selecting a financial advisory support team for a CIRP?
Beyond general CA competence, an RP should look for: familiarity with the specific reporting formats the Regulations require (not generic financial advisory formats); forensic accounting capability for the avoidance-transaction work, not just statutory audit experience; the capacity to turn around large claims-verification volumes within the Regulation-prescribed timelines; and a track record of work that has actually been tested before the NCLT or NCLAT, since that is the ultimate quality bar for any CIRP-stage deliverable.
In practice: We encourage every RP evaluating us to ask specifically how our prior CIRP-stage findings have held up under Adjudicating Authority or CoC scrutiny — that track record matters more than general firm credentials in this specific, high-stakes area of practice.
Where this sits in the wider engagement
IBC Resolution Professional Support rarely arrives on its own. The statutory basis and the current requirements are set out on the IBC Resolution Professional Support service page, and the related services are grouped under Corporate Finance.
What PNPC does
PNPC Global has practised since 1986 across India and the UAE. On IBC Resolution Professional Support we take the work end to end — reviewing the facts, preparing and filing what is required, and dealing with the authority through to closure.