Tony Mitchell
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20th February
Are IVAs working?
14th May 2008 09:28
Individual Voluntary Arrangements have been with us for over 20 years but yet nobody knows how successful they actually are.
The rise of the IVA factories in recent years has focused attention on the mis-selling of what for many can be a very useful procedure for sorting out financial problems. The difficulty is, however, nobody knows what is actually going on. I am sure the IVA factories know how many of their IVA’s reach full term – but they are not saying.
For a number of years now as part of my annual application to the ACCA for my Insolvency License, I have had to report the number of IVA’s I have put in place over the last year and how many IVA’s have failed in the first 12 months.
What is happening to this information and why is it not being made public so that the users of the procedure, i.e. debtors, can truly understand what is the percentage chance of them actually completing a successful IVA and avoid bankruptcy?
IVA’s are a good thing for certain debtors but it is time that the Insolvency profession and the regulators in particular, woke up to the fact that without proper information about success rates, IVA’s will continue to be mis-sold to vulnerable debtors, to the detriment of not only them but the Insolvency profession as a whole.
