What is an IVA? Reduce debts, an IVA can solve debt problems and write off a significant level of your debts. What is an individual voluntary arrangement?

How an IVA could help you.


An IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement) is a little known government approved scheme where a debtor can come to a formal agreement with their creditors to make one monthly affordable repayment. UK IVA programmes, with the help of licensed insolvency practitioners can help UK debtors reach an understanding with everyone that they owe money to and can help avoid personal bankruptcy.

An IVA could help you become debt free stress free and make a new start.

An Individual Voluntary Arrangement can give you peace of mind and write off some of your debt.

An IVA can dramatically lower your debts, depending on your circumstances and be considered debt free after 5 years.

As a result its formal nature, an IVA needs to organised by a licensed professional debt negotiator.


Once it is decided that an IVA is right thing for you, we will need to ask you a number of personal questions about your financial status. Based on the information you provide, an affordable monthly repayment sum will be agreed with you. Once proposals have been drafted you will need to check and sign the proposal and return.

A formal application will then be made to the UK courts for an Interim Order. Once the interim order is granted, no creditors or bailiffs will be able to contact you or take legal action against you. A creditors meeting will be arranged to which you should attend. Normally, as voting has already taken place, creditors rarely attend these meetings.

For an Individual Voluntary Arrangement to be approved, your creditors will be asked to vote "for" or "against" the arrangement. It only requires one creditor to vote "for" the IVA, for the IVA to be approved. However, should only one creditor vote, and they vote against your IVA, and they represent less than 25% of your total debt, the debtors meeting will be rescheduled for a later date and your other creditors, who failed to vote will be called upon to vote again.

If the creditor who voted against the IVA represents more than 25% of your total debts your IVA application will fail. This is because an IVA can only ever be approved if 75% of the monetary value is voted for. If any of your creditors don't vote, it is assumed that they would vote "for" the IVA.

The rules of an IVA state that - providing 75% (in true value terms) of creditors that have voted, have voted to accept the IVA proposals (with or without modifications) then the IVA is agreed and becomes legally binding on all other parties even if they have not voted.

Your IVA will be legally binding, so long as you keep up the monthly repayments. Once the term of your agreement is finished (normally 5 years), you will be free from all debts, regardless of how much you have paid off.

Periodically, your personal financial situation will be reviewed, in order to see if there has been any change in your financial circumstances.

It is very important that you do not confuse an IVA with a DMP (Debt Management Plan), as DMP's are not legally binding.

Most IVA arrangements are based on one, affordable, monthly, payment, based on your disposable income and payable over a period of 60 months.

An IVA proposal has to be drawn up by a licensed Insolvency Practitioner (IP) who then presents it on your behalf to your creditors at a creditors meeting.

Normally in the case of a consumer IVA, it is usual for any creditors or their representatives not to attend the creditors meeting as most choose to vote by fax or by post.

Once your IVA is accepted the Insolvency practitioners' role becomes that of manager, monitoring the IVA's progress to ensure that the terms and conditions that were agreed at the creditors meeting are properly adhered to.

It is the debtor's responsibility to make the agreed payments to the Insolvency Practitioner, who ensures that the payments are distributed to all your creditors on a pro-rata basis in accordance with terms of the IVA. This practice continues until the successful completion of the IVA.

It is within the debtors personal interests to ensure their payments are made as failure to pay the monthly sum will almost certainly result in the failure of the IVA.

Once the IVA has been successfully completed, the debtor will be considered debt free. This is despite the fact that they may not have actually paid off all of their debts. Any outstanding balances are then written off and the debtor is at liberty to make a fresh financial start.

To gain a clear and full understanding of what an IVA is and how it could help you, you should complete our online form so that one of our insolvency practitioners make contact you.