What Insolvency solution should I do?

When faced with serious financial difficulties, the debtor may have various options suggested to him by friends, family or other colleagues in whom he may have confided. Or it may be that his bank manager, one or more of his creditors or his business colleagues suggest what he should do, again assuming that they are aware of his financial circumstances. As in any important decision making process, it’s best to avoid plumping for what might seem an attractive solution at first and the well-meaning but sometimes erroneous advice of friends or colleagues. Continue reading

IVA and Bankruptcy statistics

Back in 2012 we noticed a significant swing away from bankruptcies and towards Individual Voluntary Arrangements or IVAs. It is interesting to look at what has been happening since then and particularly whether that trend has been sustained. The short answer is that it has and the numbers of individuals choosing bankruptcy continues to decline sharply.

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Debt Relief Order changes

Major changes have been announced in the Insolvency regime in England and Wales so as to make access to a Debt Relief Order much easier for people struggling with debt, particularly a certain category of insolvent debtors who were caught in a dilemma whereby they did not qualify for a Debt Relief Order and neither could they afford to pay the costs of bankruptcy. Hence the contradictory term: ‘too poor to go bankrupt’. Continue reading

How does an IVA work?

Like many experiences in life, you can’t really know how an IVA works unless you experience it for yourself. And because no two IVAs are exactly alike, each experience is also unique in many ways. Various analogies are quoted such as fingerprints, snowflakes and DNA. From a distance they all look the same, yet they all differ. However there are some certainties if a you are to successfully complete an IVA and come out at the other end with a fresh start, debt-free and solvent again. Continue reading

Help with Debt Problems

When things go wrong in life, one of the hardest things to do is to accept and acknowledge that it’s our own fault and that we are to blame. OK, sometimes it is somebody else’s fault. i.e. If a relationship breaks down, the other person may have been the biggest factor in the event. If you lose your job, it may be that your employer really was losing money or it may be that your function no longer existed in the organisation or that a restructuring was really necessary. If you fail your exams, it may be that the paper was unfair and that the questions weren’t really within the boundaries of the syllabus. And when personal debt problems emerge, it’s only natural that our first inclination is to assign blame to circumstances outside of our control and to blame any convenient third party for our predicament. Continue reading

Why creditors might reject your IVA

Incorrect financial information

Creditors take it for granted that you are truthful in your IVA Proposal about your current financial circumstances and how they arose. They expect you to be open, frank and honest and to disclose all relevant facts about your income, expenses, assets and liabilities. If a creditor is aware that you are hiding some important fact about your insolvency they then they will be dubious about the IVA proposal as a whole and be likely to reject it. Continue reading

Using credit before an IVA

If you suspect that you may be insolvent* (unable to pay your debts), you might be thinking about doing an IVA or  going bankrupt. Certainly if you have been defaulting on repayments of unsecured loans and if you have only been able to make minimum payments on your credit cards or store cards, there is a good chance that you are indeed insolvent.

*One definition of insolvency is the ‘inability to repay your debts as and when they fall due’. Continue reading