Tony Mitchell
Tony's recent articles
- A Year of Celebration
19th January - Bankruptcy Tourism – Another E.U. Headache
20th October - The Third Sector Under Pressure
14th July
IVA Failure Rates Revealed
1st January 2010 10:45
For the first time since their introduction in the Insolvency Act 1986, the success rate of Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) in England and Wales actually reaching the full term has been published. The figures were released by The Insolvency Service on 4 December 2009 and covered the period 1987 until 2008.
Since 1991, the figures have been fairly consistent and show that of all IVA entered into by debtors, about one third do not reach a successful conclusion.
I will confess that I fully expected the failure rates to be higher but even at these levels, questions must be raised as to the quality of the original advice given to debtors entering into an IVA and whether bankruptcy would have been a better option.
Here at Cranfield we have always been very cautious about advising debtors to enter into an IVA and only in very special circumstances do we consider this option to be the right option.
According to the statistics there are still two IVAs ongoing that started in 1988. A twenty two year old IVA seems to be a little excessive!
