Within the first three months of the approval of your IVA, it is quite common for you to still receive contact from creditors. As creditors have numerous offices throughout the country, it can take time for them to update their systems with confirmation of the IVA.

We’ve already taken steps to try and stop any further creditor contact before it happens but if it does, contact your Account Manager and we’ll take care of it.

Creditors are ordered by the Consumer Credit Act of 1974 to issue regular statements to their customers. Please expect to receive a statement of your account every 6 to 12 months. These letters usually state they are issued in accordance with the Consumer Credit Act so you don’t need to do anything with them, but we suggest you keep hold of them for your records.

Now that your IVA is approved, you are legally protected from any collection activity or requirement to honour the loan agreement. However, as the loan has been guaranteed by a third party who is not included in your IVA, they are still responsible for the contractual obligations under the loan. If payments are not maintained, the guarantor will be pursued for payment.

If your guarantor is unable to make payment due to a change in their financial situation, they must contact the loan provider directly.

Your creditors can sell your debts to other companies whilst you are in your IVA – this is quite common. If you receive any letters from these third-party companies, please forward these to your Account Manager so that we can take any necessary action.

Do not worry if any of your creditors sell on a debt, as this will not affect your IVA as it is the debt that is legally bound by the terms and conditions of the IVA, regardless of the company that owns it.

If you receive notification of any debt that you may have forgotten to include in the IVA, it may be possible to include these in your IVA. Please forward the documents to your Account Manager to investigate.

Once the IVA is approved, we will contact your creditors to remove any deductions in place. This does not happen immediately upon approval and usually takes around 1 month to stop. If after this time, the deductions are still continuing, please contact your Account Manager to discuss further.

If you change your banking details, you must notify us as this could have an impact on your payments being received into the arrangement. Missing payments can have a detrimental effect on the success of your IVA.

It is against the terms of the IVA for you to apply for credit greater than £500, without the expressed consent of your Supervisor.

During your IVA, you shouldn’t take out any credit as you have no money spare in your monthly budget to pay this back. If something happens outside of your control and you need to make a very important purchase, then please contact your Account Manager to discuss this further.

We here at The Insolvency Group make monthly payments to your creditors.

We make a payment to creditors upon receipt of your first contribution unless otherwise specified in modifications.

PPI needs to be investigated as a condition of your IVA. Even if you feel as though you have already pursued PPI reclaim, you must return the pack and co-operate with the PPI agent.

Within the first six months of your IVA, you will receive a PPI information pack from our preferred partner, who works in partnership with us to investigate any potential PPI refunds that you may be entitled to.

The Insolvency Register is a public register available online. It contains searchable information on any Insolvency solution, such as Bankruptcy, IVAs and Debt Relief Orders. Anyone who is currently in one of these solutions will have their details on this register. When your Insolvency solution is complete your details will be removed from the register (this can take a few months).

Yes but if you decide to sell your property during the term of the IVA, you will have to introduce 100% of your available net equity or sufficient funds to pay creditors and the cost of the IVA in full. However, if you wish to retain some of the equity, we can look to re-negotiate these terms with creditors. It is important that you advise your Account Manager of your intentions, so we can determine how best to proceed.

The Supervisor of your IVA will secure a restriction against your property. This does not give us any powers to sell your property or stop you from changing your mortgage product. The restriction ensures that the Land Registry notify us if you try to sell your property during the term of the arrangement or if any creditors attempt to secure any charges against your property. The restriction will be removed once the arrangement has finished.

Yes, there are a few ways you could do this.

A meeting of creditors can be convened to offer a sum of money in full and final settlement of your obligations under the IVA. The sum of money can be raised by:

• Releasing equity from your property
• Funds from a relative or other third party
• Cashing in a life policy or pension (subject to you obtaining independent advice)
• Introducing a windfall payment

Creditors are likely to agree to accept a lump sum to bring the IVA to an early conclusion, if you can demonstrate that you are paying as much as you can afford or if the payment is being offered following a change in circumstances.

If you receive monies greater than £500 during the term of your IVA, such as a lottery win, or inheritance, this is considered as a windfall. Such a payment will have to be declared to your IP and paid or part paid into the IVA for the benefit of the creditors. This also includes PPI refunds.

You can make payment via a recurring card payment. This is a hassle-free way of making your payment and does not charge you if the payment is not successful.

If you would prefer not to pay by recurring card payment, you can set up a Standing Order mandate. This is your instruction to your bank to make payments to your IVA.

It is important that you keep up repayments to your IVA as failure to do so could result in the failure of your IVA.

In saying this, we do understand that your circumstances can change which could affect your ability to make your contractual repayments. If you are worried that you are going to miss a payment, it is important that you contact your Account Manager as soon as possible. There are a variety of options available to you and we promise that we CAN and WILL help you.

You can request a voluntary termination of your IVA, but it is not advised unless the reasons for doing so are acceptable. Cancelling an IVA can result in serious consequences. It needs a lot of thought, and you should discuss it with an Account Manager as there may be ways we can help you.

If after discussing with an Account Manager you want to proceed with the termination of your IVA, then you need to confirm this in writing to your Supervisor. Your Supervisor will fail the IVA and send you a Certificate of Termination and his Final Report. You will still need to address your outstanding debts, and these may have increased if creditors choose to backdate any interest and charges.

What happens next is dependent on the terms of the IVA, how much has been paid into the IVA and at what point it fails.

Some IVAs will require your Supervisor to apply to the court to make you bankrupt if enough contributions have been made to meet the costs associated with this process. Other IVAs will simply fail and any money paid into the IVA will firstly be used to discharge any outstanding costs of the IVA. Where funds are available, a final payment will be made to creditors.

You will lose the legal protection of the IVA and creditors will be able to start recovery action against you. They can apply interest and charges to the debts.

This is a very important obligation of your IVA and failure to co-operate with this will constitute a default of your IVA which could see the IVA being terminated.

The purpose of this review is to assess your household income and expenditure to determine the appropriate affordable monthly contributions required by you.

If you experience any changes in your income and expenditure throughout the IVA, you do not have to wait until the annual review, we can reassess your finances at any point.

The Supervisor is required to send an annual report to you and your creditors. The report will detail the progress of the IVA, obligations, performance and any breaches that have occurred.

It is therefore, important that you keep us informed of any changes so this information can be relayed to creditors where appropriate.

As people may earn more than expected as a result of bonuses, commission, overtime or salary increases, creditors request that if you do earn additional income, you must introduce 50% of this into your arrangement. The arrangement allows for you to retain the first 10% of your additional earnings though.

It is important that you keep up to date with these payments because failure to do so, may result in a breach of the arrangement which will put your IVA at risk of failure.

If you are unable to pay this because you have had emergency expenditure that is not accounted for in your monthly budget, please provide us with copies of the receipts to take this into consideration when we calculate whether you have received any additional income.

If you own your home (or any other property), the ‘equity’ is the current market value of the property minus the total outstanding amount of any mortgage and other loans secured on it.

Example:

If you have any equity in your property, this is seen as an asset by your creditors. The IVA protects your property meaning you will not be forced to sell your property and creditors cannot secure their debts against your property.

In return for this protection, creditors ask that you attempt to release some of your equity. The obligation includes strict guidelines on the amount of equity you can be asked to release, and what happens if you cannot get a re-mortgage or other type of secured loan to release it.

This usually happens towards the end of your IVA. We will contact you around 6 months before the completion of your IVA.

You will be required to obtain and provide the following information:

• Professional Property Valuation– you can ask a local estate agent to value your property
• Mortgage Redemption Statement– you can request this from your mortgage lender. It should show your current outstanding mortgage and remaining mortgage term
• Secured Borrowing Redemption Statements– you can ask your lender(s) for these. This includes any second mortgages, secured loans or charging orders
• Endowment Statement(if applicable) – you can ask your endowment provider for this

This will depend on how much your share of the equity is worth.

• Minimal or no equity – if your share of the equity in your property is £5,000 or less, you normally won’t need to take any action to release your equity.
• Significant equity – if your share of the equity in your property is over £5,000, you will need to attempt to release some of this equity and pay it into your IVA.

You will never be expected to try to release all of your share of the equity in your property, because calculations are based on 85% of your property’s value.

Example

In this example, this would be deemed as insufficient equity to attempt to release and the IVA would simply end once all payments had been made. If your share of equity exceeds £5,000 you would be expected to try and release equity by remortgaging or taking out a secured loan.

If, your share of equity exceeds £5,000 and despite your best attempts, you are unable to release the equity in accordance with the terms of the IVA, the duration of the arrangement will be extended by a further 12 months in lieu of the equity. However, creditors may include modifications, so it is always best to check with your Account Manager.

Congratulations! At last you have done all the hard work and can now enjoy a debt free future.

Upon receipt of your final payment and completing all obligations, you will receive your Certificate of Completion and the Supervisor’s final report. This is confirmation that:

• Your IVA has been completed. The final dividend payments have been sent to your creditors and the remainder of your debts have been written off.
• Your details will be removed from the Insolvency Register (usually takes three months)
• The Insolvency Register sends the information to three Credit Reference Agencies. The IVA will remain on your credit file for six years upon commencement of your IVA.
• If you own a property, we will remove the restriction placed at the Land Registry.

You should check that all the above has been completed correctly. Approximately 12 weeks upon receiving your final paperwork, you should check:

• The Insolvency Register– if this has not been removed, call us immediately and we will correct this
• Experian, Equifax and Call Credit– obtain a copy of your credit report, you do not need to check all three but these agencies are the most up to date. If your IVA still shows active, send a copy of your final paperwork to the Credit Reference Agency and ask them to correct this
• Land Registry– the restriction should be removed however, if this still appears on the Land Register, please inform us and we will ensure this is removed

After this, wait approximately four more weeks, to give your creditors time to update their records. Then you can start the process of cleaning up your credit file. Your creditors are responsible for updating the default entries on your credit file.