Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVA)

You prepare a proposal to your creditors. An Insolvency Practitioner considers the proposal and, if he/she considers it appropriate, calls a meeting of creditors to consider it. If 75% of your creditors agree to the proposal it will be accepted. They may suggest changes to the proposal which would be discussed with you. When the terms of the arrangement are agreed by you and your creditors the arrangement is approved.

An IVA is a formal, legal agreement between you and your creditors.

The Protocol is an agreement which provides a structure, approved by the major banks and credit organisations, for dealing with consumer IVAs. If Insolvency Practitioners follow the requirements of the protocol in preparing the proposal, creditors who have accepted the content of the protocol are expected to adhere to the terms.

It is the formal document which forms the basis of your agreement with creditors.

The terms of the proposal will be specific to your circumstances but your creditors will expect you to pay the maximum you can afford on a monthly basis, for the duration of the IVA. For example, if your income increases by more than 10% they will expect you to increase your payments and if you receive a lump sum you should pay that into the arrangement too. If you have other assets they may have to be used for the arrangement as well; we will discuss with you how your assets can be included or excluded from the arrangement depending on your circumstances.

During the IVA the creditors are required to agree to freeze all interest and charges on your debts. If you keep up your side of the agreement, whatever is left owing at the end of the IVA will be written off by your creditors. This means that you only pay back what you can afford during the term of the arrangement.

If you do not have enough income to make monthly payments, you can still do an IVA providing you can make a one-off lump sum payment. There are a number of ways this money can be raised. For example, a friend, relative or third party may give you a gift in order to clear your debts, you could release the equity in your property or surrender a life policy. The creditors are likely to accept writing off the majority of your debt if it is clear to them this is the only solution.

In a lump sum IVA the whole process can take as little as 3 months compared with 5 years in a monthly payment IVA.

An IVA can be agreed and in place in less than 6 weeks. For you this will mean a suspension of all legal action, no further worrying phone calls or being chased by debt collection agencies.

Once you have received debt advice and decided an IVA is the right debt solution for you, we will need you to provide evidence of each of your debts, monthly income and expenditure, details of any assets etc. We require a clear summary of your financial situation for your creditors. Once we have assessed this information, we will confirm whether an IVA is the right option for you.

If you have equity in your property you may have to re-mortgage to release equity which will be paid into the IVA. You won’t have to re-mortgage if it will make the payments unaffordable or if it will take your mortgage above 85% of the value of your property, but in these cases you may need to pay into your IVA for an extra year instead.

The fees for an IVA are agreed by your creditors and are taken out of the money paid into the arrangement once the IVA has been approved. You do not pay anything extra to cover the fees.

IVA companies may charge different fees, it is important you understand the fees before you go ahead with an IVA.